Orange, Lemon and Brandy Marmalade

In preparation for this week's BakeOff, I thought I'd post my recipe for marmalade. This was my first bash at making marmalade, and it was so successful that the resulting jars made it into our Christmas hampers, along with assorted jams and Chocolate and ginger biscotti.

(That's Crab apple and Chilli Jelly on the left, Bilberry jam in the middle, and a jar of marmalade on the right. And all artistically wrapped below...)

This recipe uses 1.6kg of fruit - you might want to reduce this as I found this amount filled even our biggest pot and there were a few tense moments during the boiling stage! It also made a huge number of jars - far more than any of my other batches of preserves - not that I'm complaining - apart from giving some away as presents I now have gorgeous homemade marmalade to last me through the next year!
You'll need :

1.2kg Oranges
400g Lemons
2.2kg Sugar
2.5l Water

Some brandy (you decide how much!)

Juice the fruit, retaining the peels. Chop the peel into chunks (fine or thick depending on how you like your marmalade!). Place the juice, peel, sugar and water into a large saucepan and warm to dissolve the sugar.

Bring to the boil and cook until it reaches setting point (test by cooling a few drops on a chilled plate). This stage smells absolutely fabulous! Once it has reached setting point, cool a little then stir in some brandy (I added about 100ml - will probably use more next time as I didn't notice the flavour that strongly). Pour into jars, and allow to set.