Morning Whiskey Marmalade

This is Whiskey-fied and it was the only recipe I ran across that suggested an alcohol I had in my bar. I didn’t like the name from the recipe book (sometimes it feels like they ran out of idea and were stretching a bit at the end), I thought putting carrots in marmalade was strange, and really whiskey didn’t seem to fit with the ingredients at all. But it called for Whiskey and I owned Whiskey and I needed to booze up a marmalade.

1. Booze

I liked using navel oranges for this because the pith tends to stay with the fruit not the peel and I didn’t have to worry about seeds. I roughly peeled the oranges and did the peels up in the food processor because I was still in high lazy, max cheater mode. I found that the easiest way to get the orange pulp out from the membranes was to cut the pith from the outside with a sharp knife then use my thumbs to get the pulp out from between the segments. This didn’t work so well for the extra navely pieces at the bottom of the orange but it got me most of the way there with very little effort or waste. I squeezed the pith when I was done to get as much juice back as possible.

2. Segmenting my oranges

The recipe called for whole allspice and cinnamon in a spice bag but I apparently don’t own whole allspice. So I generously decided that the marmalade could keep the allspice forever and I stuck the cinnamon in without wrapping it up. I also added some store bought OJ because I didn’t think I had enough juice when I started cooking. Oh and I cut out some sugar because I always get freaked out when I see all the sugar I am putting into a fruit spread.

3. Trying to follow the directions

Other than that I stayed pretty true to the directions for once. Keep in mind that I was fresh from a failure to gel on blood orange marmalade so I was trying to be on better behavior. I was also regularly getting updates on the birth of a new family member as I stirred and prayed for the gel stage to hurry up which made this more interesting. I toasted the baby with a shot of whiskey when I added the sauce to the marmalade because it felt like the right thing to do (even though I think whiskey is awful stuff) so I guess this is her marmalade? Even though she can’t eat it…hmmm…Child I will have to make you more.

4. My yield 7 half pints. Ignore the jars in the background and the extra stumpy jar. They were from the doomed blood orange marmalade.

Special Equipment: Water bath canner, Jars, bands, and lids, canning funnel, bubble remover

Morning Whiskey Marmalade
(Adapted Morning Cheer Marmalade from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving)
1/8 t Ground allspice
1 Cinnamon stick
5 Navel Oranges
1 Granny Smith apple peeled cored and grated
4 c grated carrots (I did not peel, ~6 largish carrots)
1 ½ C Water
1 C Orange Juice
3 C Sugar
1/3 C Lemon juice
¼ C Whiskey (1 very full shot glass)

1. Peel oranges. Chop peels into small pieces using a food processor. (Or score orange rinds into quarters and peel then cut peel into very thin strips.) Add to large sauce pan
2. While working over a bowl to catch the juice, cut pith and outer membrane from each orange. Remove orange segment from between interior membranes.
3. Add spices, orange segments and juice, apple, carrots, water and orange juice to saucepan with peel pieces and bring to a boil
4. Boil gently for 15 minutes then stir in lemon juice and sugar while maintaining boil
5. Boil hard until mixture reaches gel stage ~30 minutes (I forgot to time)
6. Stir in whiskey, and discard cinnamon stick
7. Ladle into jars leaving ¼ inch headspace
8. Remove bubbles and adjust headspace if required
9. Wipe rim, center lid, and screw band to fingertip tight
10. Place jars in water bath canner and adjust water level to cover the jars if necessary
11. Bring to a boil and process for 10 minutes
12. Turn off heat, remove canner lid, wait 5 minutes and remove jars
13. Check seal in 24 hours. Reprocess or label and store

My Yield: 3.5 pints or 7 8-oz jars

Oranges in Orangecello

1. Behold the beauty of the blood orange

First let me say that I am in love with blood oranges. They are beautiful inside and out and I love the way the flavor subtly changes with the color even within the same wedge. They are also sort of a luxury in this part of the world because they are rarely seen in the supermarket so when I saw them I kind of went a little nuts planning to put them in EVERYTHING. Then I did a cost/benefit analysis and cut back on my dreaming a little bit. However, this recipe was definitely a splurge from the idea stage so I went full on, all go no quit blood oranges. 

My inspiration came from Oranges in Cointreau in the “Fruits of Distinction” section of my favorite Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. The recipe calls for an orange liqueur meaning something like Cointreu, Grand Marnier, or Triple Sec, but I ended up with this:

2. Orangecello

Which. Is. Amazing. It is more than a little sweet and the alcohol is kind of rough but mostly it tastes like Orange Crush for adults.

Since I was starting with extremely sweet to begin with I cut back on the sugar in the recipe. I also had some left over juice from making citrus preserves which equated to pretty much grapefruit juice sweetened with honey so I used that instead of water. I added extra liquid since I took out some sugar but there wasn’t much in the pan. (Keep in mind that the original recipe calls for 3.5 C sugar and 2/3 C water which is basically sugar paste that you melt in to candy which wasn’t my goal.) I assembled, disassembled and reassembled my spices into a spice bag and tossed that into the liquid to simmer.

3. Assembling, disassembling, and reassembling

The spice bag was never completely submerged which probably bothered me more than it should. At any rate the liquid shifted from clear to a mellow honey color as it simmered. And somewhere along the line several bits of cheesecloth string and spice crumbles managed to pull themselves away from the mother spice bag. I eventually had to pull the riffraff out with a fork.

4. Note the color change

While the spices simmered and escaped, I sliced my bloody little victims into half-moons of wonder and joy. This round of prep was a boon to my laziness because you don’t even peel the oranges. You simply whop off both ends, split the orange down the middle and slice. Were I to do this again I would actually cut the orange into quarters before I made my slices because it would be easier to keep from damaging the oranges while cooking and packing but semi-circles worked ok.

5. The lazy way to make orange goodness

I had been seriously questioning the volume of liquid from the beginning, but when I added my oranges to the saucepan it became clear that I was going to need way more juice. I stayed true to the recipe and added ¾ C of my orangecello and ½ C wine but ¾ of my oranges weren’t even wet. So I threw in the rest of my grapefruit juice, brought the wine up to 1 C total and managed to allow myself to part with another ¾ C of orangecello. I still did not cover all of the oranges, but it was close so I let the mixture be.

I picked one jar to be the recipient of all of the messed up pieces so that the gifts looked the best they could and I put the smallest pieces in the stumpy jar because the bigger pieces didn’t even fit.

I was more diligent than normal about getting every last bubble out of the jars because I have been having issues with floating fruit. I did not have any seepage in this batch and the fruit is only floating a little which is ok.

6. None of the fruit is out of the syrup even though there is space at the bottom of the jars

I had less than 8 oz of syrup left after filling my jars. (Which, by the way turned a lovely ruby color.) It tastes kinda like Christmas. I think I kind of, sort of, (REALLY REALLY) want to try this again with a blue Curacao. I want to know if I get purple.

I tried 2 different styles of “tequila sunrise” using the leftover red juice instead of grenadine. The first was tequila with the last of my left over grapefruit juice mixture which wasn’t really all that good. The sugar difference between the grapefruit juice and the blood orange syrup was enough that the layers of yellow and red stayed pretty much separate so you didn’t get the subtle sunrise mixing which gives the drink its name. Plus when grapefruit and tequila get together the bitter tones of both are emphasized and the other flavors are muted. But if you go with tequila, orange juice and blood orange syrup the drink is mighty tasty and the sunrise actually happens.

Anyway here is my recipe…

Special Equipment: Water Bath Canner, Jars, lids and bands, bubble remover, cheesecloth

Blood Oranges in Orangecello
(Recipe highly adapted from Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving)

10 whole cloves
5 cinnamon sticks broken
1 3/4 C sugar
1 1/2 C grapefruit juice sweetened with honey
9 Blood oranges
1 1/2 C Orangecello
1 C white wine (I used a sweet wine but dry might be better)

1. Break spices into pieces and tie together in a square of cheesecloth creating a spice bag.
2. Add sugar, water and spice bag to saucepan and bring to boil for 10 minutes.
3. Do not peel oranges. Cut ½ in off the ends of each orange, cut in half lengthwise and slice into 1/8 inch pieces
4. Remove spice bag (and fragments) and add orange pieces, Orangecello and wine
5. Slowly return to boil stirring gently and remove from heat once boiling.
6. Place orange in jars leaving ½ in headspace
7. Cover with blood orange syrup from the saucepan
8. Remove air bubbles and readjust headspace to ½ in if necessary
9. Wipe rim, center lid, and screw band to fingertip tight
10. Place jars in water bath canner and adjust water level to cover the jars if necessary
11. Bring to a boil and process for 15 minutes
12. Turn off heat, remove canner lid, wait 5 minutes and remove jars
13. Check seal in 24 hours. Reprocess or label and store

My Yield: 4.75 pints or 9 8-oz jars and 1 4-oz jar (with less than 8 oz left over syrup)