How to make delicious apple marmalade for the winter
Homemade sweets made from natural products, prepared with your own hands, are the most delicious and healthy. You can easily verify this by trying to make your own apple marmalade for the winter - a fruit dessert whose taste reminds of a carefree childhood. We share the secrets of making a fragrant apple treat.
How to choose apples for homemade apple marmalade
Marmalade in this respect is absolutely not pretentious. It doesn't matter if you use hard ripe fruits or soft overripe fruits, the dish will succeed in any case. The main thing is that they are ripe and unspoiled.
As for the variety, there are no strict requirements here either. However, apples with a pleasant sourness contain more natural pectins, therefore, they gel faster. For example, Saffron, Gloucester or Royal Gala.
At home, the usual edible gelatin, or zhelfix, a substance containing natural pectin, will help speed up the process of converting applesauce into a gelatinous mass.
In addition to gelatin, the following additives can be used in production to thicken the product:
- agar-agar;
- pectin;
- modified starch.
Apples are among those fruits that can turn into jelly without the use of thickeners. You just need to take your time and do everything according to the recipe.
How to make a classic apple marmalade for the winter
To prepare a traditional fruit treat, just stock up on the following ingredients:
- ripe apples - 1 kg;
- granulated sugar - 600 g;
- water - 500 ml;
- cinnamon - on the tip of a knife.
It is allowed to experiment with the composition, using other favorite spices used in the confectionery industry instead of cinnamon. For instance, ginger, lemon zest, anise. It all depends on personal taste preferences.
In the proposed recipe for apple marmalade for the winter, you can completely do without spices if you want to enjoy the pure taste of a natural product.
The dish is prepared in the following sequence:
- The apples are thoroughly washed, cored and peeled. Then cut into small cubes or thin slices.
- Put the chopped fruit in a saucepan with a thick bottom, pour in water and put it on the stove. Boil over low heat until the consistency of puree, stirring constantly with a wooden spatula, so that nothing is burnt.
- It is necessary to interrupt the cooking process in order to cool the mass and grind it through a sieve. Modern kitchen appliances can be used for this purpose. This will help you achieve perfect uniformity and then resume boiling.
- The granulated sugar should be added gradually and carefully, while stirring the apple marmalade.
- After about an hour or so, when the dish begins to flake off the bottom of the pan, it must be removed from the heat. It is easy to determine the readiness of the product - the drops do not spread, and the product itself becomes like a thick jelly.
- Hot viscous delicacy is packaged in sterilized jars, like ordinary jam, and closed with plastic lids.
Such a sandwich version of apple marmalade for the winter can be smeared on bread or used to make pies.It is recommended to keep the product in the refrigerator.
Option with gelatin
Long-term heat treatment of fruits negatively affects the value of marmalade, reducing the content of vitamins. To keep the dessert healthy, the time for boiling apples can be reduced by 2 times. To thicken the mass, food gelatin is simply added to it.
To do this, you need to prepare the product in advance:
- Dissolve the gelatin in a little cold water and leave to swell for 30-40 minutes.
- When the mixture looks like a sponge, it must be heated in a water bath until it is completely dissolved, in no case allowing it to boil.
The finished solution is poured into a hot mass prepared according to the above recipe for apple marmalade for the winter. Mix thoroughly. For 1 kg of fruit, you will need at least 5 teaspoons of dry gelatin.
Vegetarians can use an agar agar thickener instead of gelatin by dissolving it as directed in the accompanying instructions.
Recipe for making apple marmalade from jam
It happens so that winter preparations are stuck in the refrigerator, and children so want variety. You can try to make healthy treats out of them. For example, make apple jam marmalade.
In principle, jam is already a ready-made basis for such a dessert. All that remains to be done is to boil down the mass to the required condition.
This is done as follows:
- Apple jam heated in a container with a thick bottom. Remember to stir periodically until excess moisture evaporates.
- Cool the mass a little and add well-swollen gelatin, prepared in advance according to the instructions.
- The composition is thoroughly mixed.
It is easy to form beautiful figures from the resulting product using the technologies described below.
How to make slab marmalade
Fruit marmalade in the form of a layer is an interesting way of decorating. Guests and especially children will like it. To do this, a thick substance is spread in a thick layer while still hot on any flat surface. The marmalade is leveled with a knife and left to dry. Then it is carefully cut into pieces.
Only a flat enameled saucer is suitable for the formation of a layer marmalade. It is pre-moistened with water. Used and parchment paper, abundantly greased with butter.
An even more festive option involves the use of plastic and silicone molds for baking or ice. Marmalade in the form of hearts, stars or shells will decorate any table and will look no worse than a store one.
Before serving, the resulting products are recommended to roll in powder or sugar sand. So they will not stick to each other and look appetizing.