What exactly is the difference between a jam and a marmalade? I’m clearly not sure because I called this a jam and every recipe I can find calls it a marmalade. Anyway, if you know the answer please enlighten me. What I do know is that I made a cumquat jam/marmalade and it is delicious.
My grandmother rang me after sampling her jar to tell me it was the best cumquat jam she’d ever had. Now yes she may be biased but my grandma is pretty obvious. If she doesn’t like something you can tell and I didn’t get a hint of it this time.
Actually there was a pretty funny story of delivering the jam to her. I thought I’d take Ollie over between feed and sleep to visit and give her some jam. Her phone was engaged so we jumped in the car and I kept ringing all the way there (hands free) but still engaged. When we got there she couldn’t hear the buzzer cause she was still on the phone but some person took pity on the poor woman balancing a baby in one arm and bags in the other and let me into the building.
We went up to the door and knocked and knocked and I yelled and yelled and she still couldn’t hear me. To kill time I sent mum a snapchat captioned ‘trying to visit. deaf old woman.’ Except stupid auto correct said ‘dead’ old woman. I kept knocking, Ollie freaked out from the noise and started losing it, mum rang in a panic about the ‘dead’ woman and at that moment Guppy answered the door.
You try calming a baby in one hand, calming your mother in the other hand on the phone while greeting your grandmother and explaining to her why her great grandson was acting like he was being tortured.
All’s well that ends well I suppose. Back to the jam. This really was the easiest jam I’ve ever made. Of course I started with a search for ‘easy cumquat jam.’ A skipped past the few that said I had to remove the pips and chose the one that simply said, quarter, soak, boil, sweeten, boil, bottle (I summarise). Easy peasy. It really was that easy.
Saturday night I chopped them up, Sunday I boiled it all up, popped it in some jars and decorated them. It literally took just over an hour total time (not including the over-night soak).
My grandma was most impressed with the colour. She said most cumquat jams she had tried were almost brown, not vibrant orange like this one. Maybe it’s the homegrown fruit? Whatever it was, I was a bit proud. I’m going to attempt a similar thing with the lemons when they ripen. Has anyone made lemon jam/marmalade before? Enjoy!
What about you? Do you know the difference? Have you had any close calls with stupid autocorrect?
- 1 kg cumquats
- 5 cups water
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
- 5 cups sugar
- Wash the cumquats and cut them into quarters.
- Place in a bowl, add the water and cover the bowl then set aside over night.
- Pour the water and cumquats into a large saucepan, stir in the lemon juice and bring it to a boil.
- Reduce the heat to a simmer for 30 minutes or until the cumquats are soft.
- Add the sugar and stir until the sugar dissolves then bring to a boil and continue to cook on high, uncovered and without stirring for 20 minutes or until the jam has reached setting point.
- To test if it's ready, place a small plate in the fridge. Spoon a little jam onto the plate and put it back in the fridge for a few minutes.
- Run your finger through the middle and if the jam stays separated then it is set.
- When the jam is ready take it off the heat for 10 minutes and carefully scoop out any pips you can see.
- Divide between sterilised jars and seal them up.
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