Color me Orange

Actually, it's more like "Color me Kumquat." Last week before the big freeze, I picked all of our ripe kumquats. Our tree is new from last year, it is tiny, but still I was left with a nice big bowl full of sweet kumquats. Way too many for me to just eat.

So, I did two things - I used them to infuse both some vodka and gin. We did that one year and it was really refreshing for the occasional summertime cocktail. I especially like the slight bitterness.

With the rest of them, I made kumquat marmalade, which was just a little bit time-consuming. But I found a recipe for Moroccan-style kumquat marmalade that I really wanted to try. (You can find the recipe here.)

After removing all the seeds and cutting the kumquats into thin slivers I mixed them with sugar, added some orange juice and some star anise and let the concoction sit in the fridge overnight.

The next day, the marmalade was ready to be cooked. 

I boiled it for about 30 minutes to have it get nice and syrupy. The kitchen smelled wonderfully!

And just before filling it into jars, you add a tablespoon full of orange blossom water. It smelled amazing! The author of the recipe makes the jam to just have in the fridge to use, but I wanted Daniel to taste some when he got back, so I processed my two jars in a water bath so I can keep them for a longer period of time.

I hope your week is off to a good start!!

❧ Silke