beXnlog

BOM

On 1/26/09 (New Year's Day) i finished making my first attempt at Blood Orange Marmalade. Unlike the Blood Orange Jam, this time i strained the juice (of 13 blood oranges!) and mixed it with apple water as per Christine Ferber's recipe in Mes Confitures. Unlike her recipe, i used the julienned peel of 4 blood oranges instead of two thinly sliced whole oranges. I'm not super into peel and neither is be, so thin strips sounded more appealing than whole messy orange rounds.

Another huge change was my reduction of sugar from the 4.66 cups she recommended to the 1.33 cups i used, which was the same 3:1 ratio as the BOJ. That ratio of orange to sugar was perfect for me -- not too sweet and very very orangey. I know a lot of jammers out there love making it really sweet, but i tend to like the least amount of sugar possible while still allowing it to gel. So far everything before has gelled fine, once even too hard (blueberry)! The grapefruit marmalade as per CF was very good in my opinion -- but a little too sweet -- so cutting out some sugar for blood orange marmalade didn't seem like a big deal.

The problem with this batch was that a 3:1 ratio of juice to sugar was MUCH too little. For a chunky jam it worked but this batch wasn't having it. I boiled it like nuts for almost 30 minutes, hoping it would gel. At 222 degrees it still looked like red water and had reduced from over 4 cups of liquid to around 2.5. I plate tested twice hoping i was wrong, but shit was not gelling. The only thing i could think of doing was to dump in another 1/3 cup of sugar. And luckily, the batch immediately thickened and plate tasted fine. I only got 1 half-pint and 3 quarter-pints out of the batch due to so much of the water boiling out... but at least it made the marmalade super concentrated. And yes, it gelled up shockingly nicely, like wiggly jelly -- no powdered pectin at all!

The next morning we tried some of the BOM on toast. It was tasty and somewhat sour but sadly, not as "fresh" tasting as the BOJ. It tasted more "cooked" in comparison to the jam, which contained pips and chunks and seemed to contain more of the essential oils. Perhaps i just cooked and reduced the BOM batch too much, so if i try again i'll use 1.66 cups of sugar for every 2.5 cups of juice and see what happens at 10 minutes of boiling.

Overall, though, the BOM is a beautiful dark, opaque blood red. I filled the half-pint jar first so all the rind floated to the top, but the quarter-pints have a more even distribution. Not a failure but not a grand success, either. It seems to have grown on be the more he ate it, so maybe i'll think the same when i eat it again.

posted by beXn @ 12:01 AM