Well sure it TASTES good...

It's a duck! Nah, it's just my camera being old and stupid.

I made a batch of improvised kumquat/whateverquat/meyer lemon vanilla bean marmalade last night. While it tastes spectacular, it was a pretty dumb move. 

 

2 pints of kumquats
2 pints whateverquats
4 Meyer lemons, 2 juiced
2 vanilla beans
2 Tbsp vanilla extract
4 1/2 cups sugar

I roasted the citrus like I did with the Fig/Lemon Marmalade, in my (covered) dutch oven at 275 degrees with just enough enough water to float the lemons for about an hour until the kumquats deflated like sad little balloons. 

Just before tucking into the oven

This was a silly step in the long run, while it does render the peels lovely and perfectly soft, it totally tanked the fun of using kumquats which it their cute shape! It would have behooved me for appearances sake to just roast the lemons and simply slice the Quats into thin little wheels. 

Hindsight.


I squeezed all the guts into a thin tea towel and squeezed all the juice out of the guts into the remaining roasting water. I split the vanilla beans and added them, then, with the bag of guts in the pot (to get a pectin boost), boiled the liquid for a few minutes while I chopped the peels. Once the peels were chopped into as neat of strips as I could manage (they were swiftly falling apart), I removed the vanilla beans and the bag of guts, realizing I burnt the bottom of the towel.

...Whoops

I added the peels, sugar, and the lemon juice and brought it back up to a boil and the jelling stage. Took it off the heat and let it cool for three minutes then stirred in the vanilla extract. Spooned into 1/2 pints and processed for 10 minutes.

Made a little over 6 1/2 pint jars

Lovely little vanilla speckles

Really yummy,  but not particularly spectacular looking.
This was supposed to be posted shortly after the last one of course...sorry about that.
I've been quite busy with projects so throughout this week, I should have a few more posts up.