The winter months are the perfect season for making marmalade, particularly this red pepper marmalade.

Marmalade brings brightness and colour to a bleak and dark landscape and a wee bit of joy, zingyness and downright good taste into our lives.

I have to admit that this winter has proven rather hard for me, hense lack of posts of late, and I find it a struggle to cope sometimes. Depression hasn’t just got the better of me, this time it rather grabbed me by the throat, threw me down and dragged me off to hospital.

I need sunshine and warmth, I need colour.

I made this hot and zesty red pepper marmalade the other day just to gather up at least the colours of sunshine and some of those tastes I think of as happy, bright and summery.

Marmalade Season

This is the marmalade season and one should of course look for Seville oranges if one is going for the real stuff, but for a mixture of flavours I find any orange will do. Marmalade can be a mixture of all sorts of fruits and even veggies, just as long as there is some citrus lurking in there somewhere.

This red pepper marmalade made me smile just spreading this on my toast.

It tasted sweet and tart with just a hint of fire.

It brightened up my day.

As with most of my Larder Love goodies I only made a small batch, just 4 small jars. More than enough to keep me going and to give one away as a gift too.

To make your own Red Pepper Marmalade you will need;

1 red bell pepper

1 orange

1 lemon

water

500g/1lb 2oz sugar

1 teaspoon crushed red chilli flakes

Here’s how to make your Red Pepper Marmalade;

Scrub the citrus fruits to remove any preservative wax and rinse the pepper and pat dry.

Remove the stalk from the pepper, cut into rough chunks and remove the membranes inside as this is bitter.

Slice the orange into about eight chunks and the lemon into 4 pieces.

Put all this fruit into a food processor and pulse till you get it all to form little pieces. Don’t go all out and make it into a puree, you want to still have little chunks of fruit in there.

Put the fruit into a jug and measure out the same quantity in water.

Add the dried chilli flakes and put the fruit and water into a heavy based pan and bring it to the boil, then reduce the heat and let it simmer for 20-30 minutes until the fruit is tender.

Remove from heat, cover with a clean tea towel and let it sit overnight.

Next day add the sugar to the pan and heat gently until this has completely dissolved.

Raise the temperature to a boil and let it bubble away until it reaches the setting point, about 10 minutes.

spoon carefully into sterilised jars and pop on the lids.

Enjoy a bit of warmth and sunshine on these dark winter days.

This super easy recipe is one of over 50 recipes in my Naughty and Nice Edible Gifts For Christmas Ebook.

Karon x