Marmalade Recipe Roundup

It's Februrary and that means it's marmalade season.   I love marmalade.  Nothing is as beautiful this time of year as a jar of citrusy sunshine.

I love marmalade on toast.   Also, on pancakes.  Also, on Blueberry Steel Cut Oats with yogurt.  Also, on brownies.   Also, on ice cream.    Also, on brownies with ice cream.



I love marmalade!  

Here are a few tips and recipes to get you started.   

• Marmalade Tools
• Mixed Fruit Marmalade
• Four Fruit Marmalade
• Rhubarb Marmalade
• Honey Vanilla Orange Marmalade
• Blood Orange Marmalade
• Old Fashioned, Southern Style Lemon Pumpkin Pickle [Marmalade]
• Chocolate Orange Marmalade

And once you have the jam made, here are some fabulous things you can do with it!

Orange Marmalade Cranberry Jammy Oatcakes

Eric's Jam Bars

Blintzes


Want the recipe for these Marmalades and a whole lot of other terrific jam recipes?   Check out my ebook:  A Simple Jar of Jam  at www.rurification.etsy.com.   You can preview the book by clicking the link on the sidebar.  Every purchase helps support this site.  Thank you!

Winter Garden Soil Amendment

I miss the garden in the winter and whenever the weather is warm enough to work comfortably, I'm out there fiddling with things.  

And thinking.  

Sometimes I just walk around and look and think.  

In between the thinking, I do what I can to improve the soil.  It's my favorite winter chore.

We have clay here.  Lots and lots of clay.   It's great for brambles, but not tomatoes. 

So I built raised beds [see above link] and every now and then we toss some extra organic material in there.   We use a lot of straw mulch, leaves, chicken dirt and sand to break up that clay.  

This is the rhubarb and pea bed.   I can't move the rhubarb to rotate the bed, so I just make sure to put lots of sand and leaves and chicken dirt in it.  It makes for happy rhubarb.   And peas.   And turnips.  I grew some fabulous turnips in this bed last year.    We just dumped a whole lot of leaves in there.   I can hear the rhubarb smiling already. 

Rhubarb!

It's rhubarb season - Yay!!    We love rhubarb.   Last year we got a bumper crop, that we chopped and froze and we're still working on those bags while this year's stalk get bigger.  [Our last big freeze set things back some...]

Rhubarb is a perennial plant that is easy to grow as long as it gets plenty of rich soil.  It does not like clay.   It does like sand and it loves manure.    I put mine in raised beds with lots of sand and every spring I dump some chicken dirt around it.   We're well rewarded every year.

Here is a list of wonderful rhubarb recipes for you to try this year.  You'll notice we like to mix berries with rhubarb. It's a Midwestern thing. 

• Strawberry Rhubarb pie - our favorite!
• Rhubarb Flaunard - it's like a clafouti, which is like a fruit custard.  Delicious!
• Berry Rhubarb Crisp
• Rhubarb Marmalade
• Strawberry Rhubarb Jam - great with vanilla, too!
• Strawberry Rhubarb Cream Cheese Coffee Cake - also fantastic with plain rhubarb.

Check out these links, too.

• Food in Jars has a post listing 10 ways to use or preserve rhubarb.  They look fantastic!
• Here's a link to how to freeze or can rhubarb in 6 easy steps.

Berry Rhubarb Crisp

Last year we cut and froze a lot of rhubarb.    First time ever!    Just recently, we realized how much we had in the freezer and we decided to start using it up.    We love the traditional strawberry-rhubarb combinations, but since our strawberries have already been used, we decided to try other combinations with rhubarb.

Turns out that Blueberry-Rhubarb and Blackberry-Rhubarb are just as good as [if not better than] the strawberry version.

Lily made a couple of crisps so we could do the tasting.   Delish!

Berry Rhubarb Crisp
www.rurification.com

2 cups blueberries or blackberries or strawberries
3 cups rhubarb
1/2 cup sugar  [3/4 cup if you know your fruit is tart.]

Preheat oven to 350.  Butter an 8 x 8 baking dish.  Toss the fruit with the sugar and put in baking dish.  Sprinkle all over with topping.  Bake for 50 minutes or until browned and bubbling.

Crisp Topping
www.rurification.com

1/2 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup flour
1/2 sugar
1 cup oats

Cut together well with pastry blender or food processor. 

Notes:  We use this crisp topping on a lot of different things.   You can use white or whole wheat flour.  You can use regular or old fashioned rolled oats.   It's good with white or brown sugar.  

Strawberry Rhubarb Cream Cheese Coffeecake

The strawberries, like everything else around here, are early  this year. 

They're beautiful!   And delicious.    We had these in a strawberry rhubarb cream cheese coffecake. 

I'd have taken a pic, but we ate it too fast.

De. Lish.

Here's the recipe anyway. 


Strawberry Rhubarb Cream Cheese Coffeecake

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups plus 1/4 cup flour [divided for batter and fruit]
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup milk
• 1 8oz pkg cream cheese cut into small cubes
• 2 cups rhubarb, washed and sliced into 1/2 inch pieces.
• 2 cups strawberries, washed hulled and sliced.

Topping

• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup cold butter

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375.   Grease 9x13 pan.

Toss the fruit with 1/4 cup of flour and set aside.

Cream the butter and sugar.  Beat in the eggs.   

Combine flour, baking powder, salt in separate bowl and gradually add to the butter/egg mixture alternating with the milk.  Begin and end with the flour mix.

Fold the fruit and cream cheese into the batter and pour into the greased 9x13 pan.

Topping:  Cut flour, sugar and butter together until crumbly with a pastry blender or in your food processor.      Sprinkle over batter.

Bake for 60 minutes or until golden and a toothpick comes out clean.  

Warning:  This is extremely delicious and very addictive.   You can cut the recipe in half.   You can use any kind of fruit you want.   We've tried it with mixed berries, too.   Mmmmm.

Rhubarb

Yeah,  I know it's hard to tell what it is,  but those little red nubbies coming up...this is rhubarb!

Which means it's really Spring!   And that I didn't kill it!   Whoo-hoo!

Over my gardening career, I have killed loads of rhubarb. 

Loads, I tell you.

Then we built the raised beds and put in tons of sand and now my rhubarb is happy. 

Happy, I tell you.

I think it's time to start thinking about strawberry rhubarb pie.   Yep.

Strawberry Rhubarb Jam

I needed some red jam in the cupboard.   We love strawberry rhubarb pie, so I thought I'm make some strawberry rhubarb jam this year.

This is an easy, pectin free recipe.    And it's a beautiful red!

Strawberry Rhubarb Jam 

• 5 cups chopped rhubarb, fresh or frozen
• 3 cups strawberries, fresh or frozen
• 5 cups sugar
• 1/4 cup water

Put the rhubarb, water, strawberries and sugar in a pot.  Stir frequently until sugar is dissolved.  Mash whole berries if necessary.  Simmer for an hour or so to thicken.    Ladle into jars.   Process 10 minutes for pints and jelly jars.  Makes about 4 pints.

Option:   Add a vanilla bean in with the fruit for Strawberry Rhubarb Vanilla jam.  Delicious!!

Want the recipe for this jam and a whole lot of other terrific jam recipes?   Check out my ebook:  A Simple Jar of Jam  at www.rurification.etsy.com.   You can preview the book by clicking the link on the sidebar.  Every purchase helps support this site.  Thank you! 

Rhubarb

Believe it or not, I still have rhubarb.   We harvested some recently and tried two new recipes - a Rhubarb Clafouti from Savor the Rhubarb and the Rhubarb Ginger Cheesecake Bars from Pioneer Woman's Tasty Kitchen Blog.

You can go to the Pioneer Woman's blog to get all the info on the cheesecake bars.   Easy and yummy!

The clafouti was a whole new thing for me.   I'd never heard of it before this year.    So, I did some research.

According to Wiki,  the proper word is Clafoutis, from the verb clafir, meaning "to fill" - as in 'filled with cherries'.  The 's' at the end is silent. 

And that is why anglophones changed the spelling to clafouti.  

The dish comes from the Limonsin region of France, which is one of the traditional provinces of France, close to the city of Limoges.  

True clafouti is made with black cherries and is cooked with the pits in.   The pits impart a distinctive flavor.   If you pit the cherries, the flavor is different.  

If you don't use cherries in this dish, it's called a 'flaugnarde' or 'flagnarde' or 'flognarde' or 'flougnarde'.   So you have lots of options. 

It looks like a traditional American cobbler only with a thinner batter.   Maybe they're related.   If you find out that they are [or aren't], let me know.    

It works like this:   You make a thin batter and pour a short layer of that on the bottom of your dish.   Bake that layer, then add the fruit or sauce and then the rest of the batter.   Bake it all until brown.   They say it's like a glorified pancake / flan.  

Rhubarb Flaugnarde

Batter:

• 3 eggs
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 3/4 cup flour

Filling:

• 3 cups chopped rhubarb
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 1/2 tsp ground allspice
• 1 1/2 TB lemon zest [OPTIONAL - I used a tablespoon of lemon juice instead because I didn't have a lemon.   You could probably leave it out all together.]
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla

Preheat the oven to 250.   Butter an 8x8 dish.  Put the batter ingredients in a blender and blend it up.  Pour a thin layer of the batter into the dish and bake it until firm.  10-15 minutes or so.   Mostly 'or so'.   Keep an eye on it and jiggle it to see if it's firm. 

In the meantime, make the rhubarb filling.   Put it all in a saucepan and cook it until soft.  

When the crust is cooked, pull it out and set the oven at 375.  Spread the filling on top of the baked layer.   Then pour the rest of the batter over all.   Bake until brown and the crust puffs up.  50 minutes. 

Traditionally served at room temperature. 

YUM!   Seriously a great way to eat rhubarb.   

Notes:   This wasn't very sweet.    Put some sweetened whipped cream or ice cream on it when you serve it.  Or you can up the sugar in the filling to 1/2 or 2/3 of a cup.  

Rhubarb Marmalade

In the middle of all the peach projects, I realized that I needed to use up our rhubarb while it was fresh. 

I heart rhurbarb. 

Mostly because I haven't killed any in Two Whole Years!

Yay me!

I made Rhubarb Marmalade with our rhubarb.   It was so good, that I made a second batch.

Rhubarb Marmalade

6 Cups rhubarb, chopped
6 Cups sugar
2 oranges
1/4 Cup crystallized ginger

Wash the oranges well and cut them in half.   Put the oranges and the ginger in the food processor and process the living haybales out of it.   [We say stuff like that in southern Indiana.   But not often.]

Put the rhubarb, orange juice/ginger goo, and sugar in a heavy pot and cook.   Stir often.   Let it get to a hard boil, then turn it down and simmer it for an hour.  

Ladle into clean, hot jars.   Process for canning.   [Pints and jelly jars 10 minutes.]

Notes:  

I like this recipe because it doesn't require any pectin.   If you like very thick marmalade, let it cook until it sheets off a cool spoon.   That will take more than an hour, especially if you've cut down the sugar...

and you can probably use less sugar, but I like my marmalade sweet.   Try a batch and see what you think. 

Want the recipe for this Marmalade and a whole lot of other terrific jam recipes?   Check out my ebook:  A Simple Jar of Jam  at www.rurification.etsy.com.   You can preview the book by clicking the link on the sidebar.  Every purchase helps support this site.  Thank you!