Thanks Jan, I am tempted to have a go at the marmalade today and have been pondering which method to go with. I'm hoping I will get enough flavour out of the used lemon halves to make it worthwhile but will also include a couple of unused lemons to help boost it. As the idea is to make good use of all your waste I dont want to cheat but on the other hand I dont want to risk all the sugar and time to make it and end up with a flavourless jelly. I will use the unused lemons to cut the strips off when they are soft.

PECTIN Questions

I have some eating apples in the steamer right now that were very soft. I have cut them up and seperated the cores and they are producing some juice.

So, 2 questions.....will the juice of the eaters be good enough to freeze and use as a 'pectin' addition when I need it in future?

And if so....could I freeze it in plastic ice cube bags so that I can just use as many cubes as I need?

Oh dear...that leads me on to a 3rd question  How do you know how much of this nectar to add....or is that a very stupid question. (Dont all shout at once )

Oh bug*er - trust me to get it wrong. Thanks Hattie, I should have known that, what a twit.

Well it wont go to waste - I'll make something with it

Finally finally got round to making my leftover marmalade and I'm absolutely thrilled with the results. I kept it really simple this time as not too sure how it would turn out.

Just added enough water to cover the leftover lemons and added all the bits of orange and satsuma peel I also saved, also a couple of whole lemons that had gone a bit hard but were fine and juicy inside.For the chopped up shreds I used orange peel as wanted a bit of colour and I wrapped these in a square of muslin and dangled them in with other fruit whilst boiling/simmering for about 2 hours. I used a masher to squash fruit up a bit after the first hour when they were all soft. Strained through a jelly bag overnight and I did give the bag a real good squeeze to get all the juice out. I know you shouldn't do this but as there was so much peel in the bag it was trapping the juice from trickling through and I thought if it goes cloudy then I wont do it next time. Maybe worth straining through a sieve first then transferring to jelly bag?

Anyway, I got just over a litre of juice which I added same amount of sugar to and let boil for 15 mins. It set first time  which is no doubt due to all the lemon juice. In fact I had to pot it up as quickly as I could as a skin was forming. It tastes beautiful - for our taste anyway. Not too bitter and not too sweet and its a lovely clear jelly so squeezing didn't affect it at all. Have a slight concern about it having lots of air bubbles but could not see how to get rid of so many and have noticed that shop bought marmalade also has air bubbles so maybe it will be ok.

I'm going to try and add 2 photos - I apologise in advance if they are too big but not sure how to resize them