I am talking about actual lemons. Not being the overly sensitive type, I’m not really anyone’s first port of call in an existential crisis. I’d try my best, of course, but you’d probably be better off with a professional rather than someone trying to feed you cake. What I do have is an overly burdened lemon tree.
Now I can only hope that these recipes work for everyone, but a lot of it will come down to the lemons you have and how powerful they are. My lemon tree appears to be turbo powered. I’m not sure why exactly, but might have something to do with the coffee grounds that I’ve been liberally strewing onto the ground beneath it? With everyone being home during lockdown, there was a lot more coffee drinking going on during the time the tree was thinking about producing this year’s lemons.
I’d recommend trying one of the lemons you’re going to use before starting to cook with them. If you have a mellower lemon, you may need to up your juice/rind to get the same effect. I’ve worked out that I need around half to a third of other recipes for my nuclear lemons. As an example, I made my usual apple pie with a good squeeze of lemon juice and three strips of peel and it was as if there was no apple present. “Nice lemon pie” was the verdict from my other half.
This was my first attempt at marmalade. I have to admit to not being much of a marmalade eater. I occasionally feel like it, but it’s not my go-to condiment of choice on toast. Usually, it only gets used in the Christmas cake. Still, the ingredients are inexpensive and so I thought I would give it a go. Lemon isn’t usually the main ingredient from what I’ve seen, but it’s what I had. To make things more interesting, I thought I’d add some lavender which is also growing in the garden. To be honest, it’s not a strong presence in this marmalade and mostly there because Lemon & Lavender marmalade sounds better than just lemon marmalade.
Lemon and Lavender Marmalade
1kg lemons (4 of my giants!)
2.5L water
2kg sugar
1/2 bunch lavender
Clean the lemons and top and tail them before placing then in a large saucepan with the cold water. Boil until the lemons are soft and easily penetrated with a fork (it took 3 1/2 hours for mine, which are larger than usual). Cool then remove the lemons from the liquid (keeping the liquid). Scoop out the flesh and strain for any seeds. I like a smoother texture so blitzed the skins and pith in the food processor. If you wanted a chunkier marmalade, then chop the skins into whatever thickness you prefer.
Measure out 1.5 L of cooking liquid and add the deseeded flesh and processed skins back into the pot. Add the sugar and lavender. Bring to the boil.
I found that my lemons had quite a lot of pith which floated to the top and clogged things up a bit, so I did remove some, along with the scum that foams on the top. Feel free to leave it, though it does reduce the bitterness a little to remove the excess. You don’t want to take all of it though, or it will be more like jam and lack the rounding bitter edge that is the signature of marmalade.
Boil until it reaches setting point, either with a thermometer (105 C/220 F) or by dropping a spoonful onto a chilled saucer and waiting for the surface to wrinkle.
Skim off any residual scum on the surface and remove the lavender stalks. The leaves that have fallen off are fine to stay in marmalade. Leave to cool a little before putting into jars so that the lemon pieces don’t all sink to the bottom.
This recipe made a lot of marmalade, six large jars to be exact. Although the ingredients were not expensive, it did take quite a long time so I wouldn’t halve it for that reason alone. The verdict? It is good, even to a non-marmalade eater like myself. I found that I have been eating a lot more of it! From marmalade fans I distributed the other jars to, they all loved it and one even said it was the best he’d ever had. You can’t get a better review than that!
The Curated Condiment 