We had several oranges and a few grapefruits sitting on our counter. The kids weren’t eating them fast enough and I already had to toss a couple that were too far gone to do anything with. I had thought about making orange cake, but with one child needing dairy free, two children needing gluten free, one needing egg free, and a mama who’s trying not to eat an overabundance of sweets, orange cake didn’t seem like a very good idea. So I decided to make jam.
Most recipes for jam with oranges are for marmalade, but I’m not really a big fan, and the oranges I had weren’t organic, so I really didn’t want to include any part of the peel in the final product. Instead I made a simple jam, using a combination of oranges and grapefruits.
It was rather simple, and I made two batches –
Into the first batch,
Peel about 5 pounds of oranges, peel 2 grapefruits (I had 4, so I divided them between the two batches I made)
Separate the sections of each to fish out as many seeds as possible
Puree them all together in a food processor (or blender) until it’s a smooth as you want – I like it to be a little chunky
Heat the puree in a pot and add sugar to taste (I used a little more than 1/2 cup of sugar – my oranges were pretty sweet and didn’t need much more)
Bring to boil for about 15-20 minutes until it’s ready to gel
Ladle into hot canning jars, put the lids on (tight but not too tight) and boil in a water bath for 10 minutes.
In my second batch, I simmered a chunk of fresh ginger, two cinnamon sticks and two cloves with my puree/sugar mixture and fished them out before canning.
And there we go, Sunshine in a Jar.