CHRISTMAS-SPICED MARMALADE

Steps:

• Peel the zest off the fruit with a vegetable peeler, leaving as much of the white pith as you can.
• Pile up the strips of zest and snip them into tiny matchsticks with a scissors and set them aside.
• Juice all the dezested fruit, setting the juice aside.
• Roughly cut the dezested, juiced fruit pieces and add them to a large pot along with the pulp and seeds from the juicer. Add the whole spices and the water. Bring the pot to the boil, clamp the lid on, turn the heat down to medium low and allow to simmer for 2 hours.
• Take 3 small plates and put them in the freezer.
• After 2 hours of simmering, pass the water through a fine mesh sieve, making sure you squeeze all the water from the pith. Discard and collected pith, pulp and spices.
• In a very large pot, add the water from the pith, the fruit juice and the snipped up zest. Stir and bring to the boil.
• Add the sugar. Stir it to help the sugar dissolve and bring to a rolling boil.
• If you have a candy thermometer, you will need to let this reach 105 degrees celsius so it will set. If you do not have a candy thermometer, then just let it boil for about 40 minutes.
• To test if it is done, take a not cold plate from the freezer and pour about a tablespoon of marmalade onto it and leave it for 5 minutes. Then slowly drag your finger across it. If the surface of the marmalade forms a crinkly surface and your finger leaves the plate clean behind it then it is done and will set. If that doesn't happen, let it boil for another 10 minutes and check again with the second plate from the freezer.
• Allow the marmalade to cool a bit before pouring it into sterilised jars. To sterilise jars, you can boil them in water or run them through the hottest cycle of the dishwasher, just don't touch the inside of the jars once sterilised. I sterilise the lids by boiling them in a small pot of water.
• Once the jars are filled, put on the lids not so tightly and submerge all the jars in a very large pot of water or a number of smaller pots and bring to the boil. Allow to boil for half an hour before you remove them from the water and tighten the lids.