The Cottage Smallholder

Most of my kitchen gadgets (kenwood chef, slow cooker, etc) were inherited from elderly relatives (as was my sewing machine for that matter) who no longer had the space for them. But if my husband decides to treat me who am I to complain. I think it's because he will have less washing up to do once I've made a batch *grin*

OK so here are my impressions so far.

First lesson learnt is to trust my insincts and to ingonore the instructions when necessary. They claimed that I didn't need to test for a set when I was using the liquid pectin. They lied and my first batch of marmalade did not set. They also claim that I shouldn't reboil the jam to get it to set (does anyone know why?) but I did that any way and it produced some nice lemon and lime marmalde, though it needed 3 times the amount of time that the recipie asked for. That's probably because I bastardised a recipie for grapefruit, orange and lemon marmalde to make it and the different fruits react differently.

The not quite full jar that is always a by product of marmalde making made a lovely marmalde cake with the help of some of the eggs from my mother's chickens.

The godsend is definitely the auto clean function. You just fill it with water, add a squirt of washing up liquid and hey presto 15 mins later everything is clean. I love it. And so does my husband who normally ends up with the washing up.

I've bought some of those cheap apricots that are mentioned in a different thread for my next attempt. I would have been trying cranberry chutney if I'd been on my way home on Friday when I went to waitrose and not on my way out for the weekend. It's a shame because at 50p for 500g I'd've made lots for christmas presents next year...