Strawberry Lemon Marmalade

 In honor of National Canning Day, here is my first ever canning recipe and experience.  It tastes soooooo much better than grocery store stuff!  I used half sugar and half Splenda to cut down on calories.  The canning was much simpler than I thought it would be.  Now, canning does use up a lot of pots:  1 for cooking the recipe, 1 stockpot for putting the jars into and 1 pot for keep the lids hot.  But 2 of those is just boiling water, so you just dump the water, dry them and your done.  Only 1 pot to clean!  My friend Jackie and I had lots of fun with this.  The canning directions stated to wait 24 hours before opening.  We kept a little leftover marmalade in the freezer to cool, so we could try it out that day.  Yum!

**Update**  I have made this 4 times now and it is awesome each time.  I feel like I’m eating summer – strawberry lemonade is one of my favorite drinks.  The yield of marmalade changes a little each time, but I simply refrigerate any leftover marmalade and consume it immediately if I don’t have enough to fill a jar.

It is really much easier than you think!  I got the Discover Canning kit and some Classic Pectin.  That is all I needed to start.  They sell them at Target and Walmart.

Strawberry Lemon Marmalade
recipe from “Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving”
yield 2 half pint jars (plus a little extra for tasting)

1/8 cup thinly sliced lemon peel, diced
2 cups crushed strawberries (about 1 qt.)
3 Tbs. Classic Pectin
1/2 Tbs. lemon juice
3 cups sugar (I used 1.5 cups sugar, 1.5 cups splenda)

1.  Long before beginning to cook, start heating the water in your stockpot.  It will take a while to heat that much water up to a rolling boil.  Also, get ready a saucepan to keep the water boiling in order to keep the jars (but only the jar and the band, not the circular lid) hot.  Some people do heat the circular lid that contains the glue, but I have also read that you shouldn’t, so I don’t.  This sterilizes the jar and avoids the shock of the hot liquid into a cold jar.
2.  In very large saucepan, put in the lemon peel and just cover it with water.  Boil 5 minutes and drain off the water.  Put the lemon peel back into the saucepan.  Keep an eye on it – sometimes I had to add more water because it evaporated away before the 5 minutes.

3.  Add the strawberries and lemon juice to the same large pot as the lemon peel.  Add pectin slowly.  Come to a rolling boil that can’t be stirred down.
4.  Add the sugar and bring back up to a rolling boil and hold for 1 minute.
4.  Take the pot off the heat.  At this point, you can take a spoon to ladle off the foam on the top.  It doesn’t need to be done, but makes it look prettier.
5.  Using a canning funnel or soup ladle, put the marmalade into the hot jar.  1/4″ of headspace should be left at the top.  Put on the lid and band.
6.  Lower all the cans into the stockpot of boiling water and process for 10 minutes.  Process for 10 minutes regardless of the size of your jar.  I use a mixture of half pint jars and quilted 4 oz. jars because the 4 oz. jars are pretty and perfect for hostess gifts and gift baskets.

Once you have canned your marmalade, let it come to room temperature and store.  High sugar and properly canned foods like this one can be stored for up to 2 years.

For a larger batch:

1/4 cup thinly sliced lemon peel
4 cups crushed strawberries
6 Tb. Classic Pectin
1 Tb. lemon juice
6 cups sugar

Recipe from Ball