My talent: undercooking jelly, jam and now, marmalade

I like to think I'm a growing being, ever changing, developing, learning, and eager to face new challenges.

I seek new and better ways to do things. If I see a flaw in my current methods, I work to change and improve those methods. Now, I do see a flaw in how I'm allocating my time for this blog. I have been focusing too much on producing frequent posts, and shortchanging the quality of my posts.

So, for the next little while, I'll be reducing my posting schedule to 3 days per week. I am hoping this will give me the time I want, to do a job well, so that you, dear friend, can have something truly worthwhile to read when you visit.

I'll continue to stick with a schedule. You can count on a post being available Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday in the early morning hours.

If for some reason, you come to creative savv and don't see a post on one of those days of the week, you can know that either I'm ill, there's been some sort of emergency in our home, or I'm having a senior moment and I thought I hit the "publish" button, but I didn't. And my deepest apologies for scenario number 3. That day will come, when senior moments occur with greater frequency. I'm just hoping I've got a long way to go until then!

But for today, here's my regular post.

the sloshy marmalade

Re-cooking a runny batch of orange marmalade

I have this incredible knack for producing unset jellies, jams and now marmalades. I thought I'd conquered this with the jams and jellies. Not an unset batch this past autumn. But evidently, my marmalade is another story.

I do know why this keeps happening. I am so afraid of developing a scorched flavor in these preserves, that I tend to err on the side of undercooked.

I made my once-a-year batch of marmalade a week ago. It came out kind of syrupy, and not at all jelled. Fortunately, I've got a lot of experience in re-cooking jams and jellies. So, yesterday afternoon I set out to re-cook my marmalade. I went online to make sure I was re-cooking marmalade correctly (in case there's any difference between re-cooking jelly and re-cooking marmalade). I found these instructions from ehow.com. It's very simple, but it does take added pectin.

To "fix" a batch of thin marmalade, measure the amount to be re-cooked. For every 4 cups of marmalade, you'll need:

1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
2 tablespoons lemon juice (bottled is fine)
4 teaspoons powdered pectin

I stirred the pectin and sugar together in a small bowl, to break up any lumps of pectin. Then I mixed these in with the water and lemon juice, right in my jelly pot. Next I stirred in the unset marmalade, until completely combined.

Stirring constantly, I brought this mixture to a boil. I could feel some build-up on the bottom of the pot, so continued stirring.  I boiled, while stirring, for 1 full minute.

I filled my sterilized jars, added new lids, and reprocessed.

So far it looks like this worked. I had a small amount of marmalade leftover, which I put in a dish on the counter, and it is thickening up nicely.

the re-cooked, and thicker marmalade

I'm hoping that your marmalade is more successful on the first run than mine. But just in case, I can (sadly) vouch that these instructions work for re-cooking a runny batch.

My weekly menu plan: family dinners plus a new dessert

Microwave Sponge Pudding

This week's menu plan comes with a twist. At the bottom is a recipe for microwave sponge pudding. Specifically, this recipe comes from Diane in the UK, and was left in the comments section for anexactinglife on the post The Valentine Dog. So, anexactinglife, scroll down to the bottom of this post, and you'll find a recipe for an easier version of steamed pudding, to satisfy your husband's yearnings for foods cooked from his UK childhood.

This week's menu plan

I'm still planning family favorites for winter evenings. Hot sandwiches are always popular, and soup makes a warming entree, when you tuck your feet under the table in late January.

vegetable good buys for the week: carrots, cabbage, onions, broccoli 

need to make ahead: 1 dozen sandwich buns, pie pastry

need to buy: cabbage, jar of jalepenos 

I'm still using up turkey and ham from the freezer, as well as a lot of frozen fruit from the summer. My goal is to empty the smallest freezer by the end of January, so that I can unplug that one. I'm almost there. I have 1 whole turkey still to roast, and a few chunks of beef. I'll be looking for poultry and beef on sale in the next few weeks.

Monday

• split pea soup (using ham stock and meat from freezer, do a double batch for Thursday), cheddar-jalepeno cornbread, microwave "steamed" pudding, chocolate this time (thanks to Diane, see below)

Tuesday (daughter helper, make salad)

• "neat" balls in sauce over pasta, green salad ("neat" balls are vegetarian meat balls, do double batch and freeze half for Saturday; last of the lettuce under lights indoors, cabbage shreds and avocado, croutons)

Wednesday (daughter helper, make the fruit cobbler)

• spinach, cheese, onion, ham pockets (in pie pastry), brown rice, frozen mixed fruit cobbler (make double batch of cobbler for tomorrow)

Thursday (son helper, make toasted cheese sandwiches while I pick up daughter from dance)

• leftover split pea soup, toasted cheese sandwiches, leftover cobbler

Friday (or what I like to call Queen Lili Day, as the kids do all the cooking)

• turkey in gravy over biscuits, cole slaw, dessert of kids' choosing (turkey in gravy from freezer)

Saturday

• hot "neat" ball sandwiches topped with marinara sauce and mozzarella cheese on sandwich buns, oven fries, frozen fruit plum-berry sauce--do double batch ("neat" balls, buns, marinara sauce in freezer)

Sunday

• hot bbq turkey sandwiches on buns, carrot and celery sticks and dip, leftover plum-berry sauce (turkey from freezer, heated through in bbq sauce, buns from freezer)

                         ______________________________________________________

This is a quick, microwaveable version of a steamed pudding.

From Diane, posted in the comments section of The Valentine Dog.

"I used a 1 1/2 litre pudding basin.
Grease the basin and put fruit jelly or marmalade or choc sauce in the bottom of the basin, a couple of tablespoons. Weigh two large eggs and mix with the same weight of flour ( I use self raising, but you can use flour with no raising agents and add in a teaspoon of baking powder instead), butter/margarine and sugar. This can flavoured how you wish. If you can make a cake in that flavour then you can make a pudding in that flavour. 
Cover the basin with microwaveable film, pierce it a few times and cook on high. I have a 900W machine and it cooks for 4 minutes in that. Leave to stand for a minute and then eat with custard or cream or ice cream. My family likes raspberry jelly with vanilla sponge, lemon curd with a citrus sponge and a chocolate version of course.The pounds and ounces version is 2 eggs, 4 ounces of butter, 4 ounces of caster/fine sugar and 4 ounces of self raising flour. Mix and cook as above."

I have a measuring cup that weighs in ounce and grams. I was able to fill to the correct amount of ounces, then scoop into standard US measuring scoops. I included the metric equivalents, as they were easy to add in.

I found the recipe very easy to put together, and with very ordinary ingredients, a huge plus for a recipe in my book.

I just want to say a big thank you to Diane, for taking the time to come back to the comments and add this recipe for us and anexactinglife. And just so you, who may be reading this, know, I love trying new recipes, and figuring out how to convert. Just a very odd quirk of mine.

Microwave Sponge Pudding

When I made this, I used a 2-quart, round, microwaveable casserole dish. If you have a 1&1/2 litre pudding basin, that is what Diane recommended. Having done this once, next time I'll try a straight-sided souffle baker. I think it will come out prettier, being taller and with straight sides.

Grease pudding basin or casserole dish.

2 tablespoons (30 ml) jelly, jam, marmalade, or chocolate sauce
4 oz. (1/2 cup, or 115 g) caster sugar (I used granulated sugar)
4 oz. (1/2 cup, or 120 g) soft butter
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (or 1/2 teaspoon lemon extract)
4 oz. (1 cup less 1 tablespoon, or 112 g) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon (5 ml) baking powder
1/4 teaspoon (1.25 ml) salt

You can also substitute a scant cup of self-rising flour for the all-purpose flour, baking powder and salt.

For a chocolate sponge pudding, reduce flour by 2 tablespoons, and add about 1/4 cup of cocoa powder to the flour mixture.

Spoon into greased pudding dish, 2 tablespoons jelly, marmalade or chocolate sauce. If jelly is very firm, stir it up with a spoon first. You want to cover the bottom of the dish, this will help in releasing the pudding once it's cooked.

Combine flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl. (Add cocoa powder if making chocolate sponge). Set aside.

In a mixing bowl, cream butter with sugar, beat in eggs. Add vanilla extract. Stir in flour mixture until combined.

Cover with a sheet of plastic wrap. Pierce plastic wrap in several places.

Microwave on HI for 3 1/2 minutes to 4 minutes (I'm not sure what the wattage is on my microwave, may be 1000 W, but the vanilla pudding was just slightly over-cooked in 4 minutes even. Next time I'll try it in 3 min. 45 seconds; chocolate pudding you may want to shorten the cooking time by 15 seconds or so, as chocolate desserts scorch easily). Allow to stand, covered in microwave for 1 minute.

Remove to cooling rack, and carefully peel off plastic wrap. Allow to cool for 5 minutes. With a flexible spatula, loosen the edges of the pudding. Place a plate over the dish, and invert pudding, using the spatula to aid in loosening the pudding. Serve while still warm, with custard, cream or ice cream.

We had ours with whipped cream, as that was easy for me. It was quite delicious, and super easy. I'm looking forward to trying a chocolate version.