Men Can Also Bake!
The Proof Is In The Pudding!
Well What Do We Have Here?
Some cut up oranges it seems! Well I've been meaning to do this for a few weeks now and finally we've gotten around to actually doing it! It wasn't as much as doing it but rather it was the tediousness of it all that we weren't really in the mood for!
Yeah it is tedious you have to remove all the peels as well as all the white stuff on it, or at-least try and get as much removed as you can! Tedious!
Anyways! This wont be a recipe based thing, we went of a marmalade recipe but we are NOT going to make a marmalade, I'll add that recipe in at the end though for any who would want to try it out!
Jam Or Jelly!
Well the Americans call it jelly it's jam for us so I'll stick with jam!
The thing with marmalade is that you have to add the peels as well, now I don't want that so I'll be adding only a bunch of the peels. More or less one orange's peel of the twelve we cut up, perhaps a peel more but more or less only one!
The peel would add a lot of the orange taste (I think?)
What I did then was cut up all the orange pieces into small bits so that it can cook out easier. That was another thing that felt as tedious as counting pebbles! Hectic stuff and with small cuts on the fingers... well I can tell you it stung quite good!
At-least the oranges are soft and they did cut up quite easily! This is a great to do with oranges that are getting too old to be appetizing!
A Lemon Yeah?
Okay so the marmalade recipe says to put in three lemons but I thought it good to only add one lemon to the bunch just for the taste of it!
I like lemons and I want to try and make some lemon jam as well! That is actually where this idea came from but now we're making orange jam! The thing is I can't see myself eating sour lemon jam on bread? But then again you throw in so much sugar how can it be sour?
Peel Pieces!
So the peels! I didn't just throw them in there! No I want them to cook out into pulp so I helped by cutting it up into smaller pieces and here's the thing I'm not even sure that it will cook out but here we go!
If this ends up in a failure we can always adjust what we did with it the next time! Right?
All Together Now!
Now once everything is cut up into a thousand pieces you can now proceed to mixing it all up and well then it's time for the next step! There really isn't that much to mixing it am I right? Oh wait no.. don't mix... rather fold it in!
A real cook would know what I mean xD!
Add Sugar!
I don't really want to I actually wanted to keep this natural but I'm not exactly sure what natural thing to use? I mean sugar is natural but it has been processed! So I do have to deal with that right?
It can't be that bad can it?
Too Much I'd Say!
Okay so the recipe goes as follows, for every kilogram of oranges you need to add a kilogram of sugar... I didn't follow this rule.
Instead I used two kilograms of sugar for three kilograms of oranges! I think it's still way too much! It doesn't look all that bad in the photo but in real life it felt like I was making a big mistake!
Although, let's see how this pans out in the end!
The Mistake We Made!
Well I'm not sure if it was a mistake or not but I think we might have added way too much water! We cooked it for a tremendously long time! But then again how are you suppose to know what you don't know?
Anyways we just left it boiling! We had to xD xD We had no choice whatsoever!
Eventually!
Eventually it looked like this! After a great deal of time! As I said this is a huge learning curve for me but one that I am very fond of!
I know the pot is a little dirty as the jam splatted out because of the bubbles it made! It's really a messy story but one that is once again so worth it! The jam is amazing or rather I do think so! Those that don't well you can eat your apricot jam for all I care xD!
Bottle It Up!
Well that was a rough thing! I didn't think making jam would be such an attentive job xD Laughs! But the bottling was a frustration with the jam sticking to everything! So I left that part of the job for "The Betty" who does have a little more patience when stuff doesn't fall in where you want it to!
Anyways! The jars were sterilized before hand and well now they can stand for a day or three just to set in nicely!
After that we can have some orange jam toasties!
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