So after making the orange cake, I was perplexed as to what to do with the scraped, zestless oranges. Yes, I could slice them up and eat them, but that’s not exactly riveting.

Make jelly, my Mum suggested. (Jello to you gals across the pond)

So I did.

Using a sharp knife, cut long strips of zest from one orange and put it in a medium saucepan with 150g caster sugar and 400ml cold water.

Find your gelatine leaves

and take out 6 of them.

Soak them in a dish of cold water so that they can soften. Leave them for 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, bring the pan up to a simmer to dissolve all the sugar into the water. Once this has happened, take the saucepan off the heat and remove the strips of zest.

Scoop the now floppy gelatine leaves from the water …

and squeeze the water out.

Stir into the liquid in the saucepan – it will dissolve almost instantly.

Leave to one side to carry on cooling down, then start squeezing your oranges, madam. You want 300ml of juice.

I got 300ml exactly from 4 oranges – what are the chances?! I used the juice attachment on my mixer though – I don’t think I could have achieved that amount using a normal ‘turn it round and round on the funny shaped glass thingy’ type.

Add the juice to the saucepan, stirring as you do so

Then put a sieve over a pretty glass dish and strain the jelly into the dish

If you wanted individual servings, strain the jelly into a jug and pour it into the smaller dishes, but we like a lake of jelly

You can see the small floating bits of real orange in this real jelly

Leave in the fridge for at least 5-6 hours, but leaving it overnight is the only way I feel confident that it’s set.

And it had; beautifully. It’s hard to describe its texture – wobbly like a jelly, obviously, but because it was real juice, there was body and substance to it. It was sweet – and the juice from the oranges was the sweetest I’ve ever tasted- but there was a fuller, tart back note to it.

Ian summed it up nicely – it was eating real food as opposed to rubbery fruit squash. There was no nasty chemical smell, nor was there the bitter aftertaste synonymous with saccharin. We put a drizzle of cream on it, but can you believe it was actually better without the cream? The flavour was so complex that the cream stifled it a bit.

You won’t find many of us in our families saying that something doesn’t need cream.

I made it because we all love jelly, but now that we’ve eaten this, I will never look forward to run of the mill jelly again. It’s not often this happens.

Alex said we shall have it every day. That is unlikely, but Ian has requested a lime version, so we’ll see where that takes us.

Not a bad way to use up scraped fruit and get your vitamin C quota all in one hit.

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Orange Jelly

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6 leaves gelatine
4 oranges (mine were only medium sized, but I’d be tempted to have another on standby, just incase you don’t get enough juice)
150g caster sugar
400ml cold water

Soak the gelatine leaves in cold water for 5 minutes to soften.
Use a vegetable peeler or a small sharp knife and a steady hand to remove the zest of one orange in long strips.
Put into a medium saucepan with the water and sugar and bring to a simmer, stirring now and again, until the sugar is dissolved.
Remove the pan from the heat and remove the zest.
Scoop the now floppy gelatine leaves from the water and squeeze the water out. Stir into the liquid in the saucepan – it will dissolve almost instantly.
Leave the saucepan off the heat and allow the contents to cool a while.

Squeeze the oranges until you have 300ml of juice. I got this from exactly 4 oranges using the juice attachment on my mixer. If you are squeezing the oranges with a normal glass/ceramic juicer, you may not get this amount of juice – I know I never managed to get a huge amount when I did it by hand.

Stir the juice into the saucepan.
Strain the jelly through a fine sieve either into a jug so that you can pour individual servings into glasses/dishes, or sieve it straight into one large serving dish.

Refrigerate for a minimum of 5 hours – overnight would be a safer bet.

This is a great recipe to have up your sleeve when a recipe calls for lots of zest, but little or no juice. Also a great way to take advantage of a glut of citrus fruits from your greenhouse (!) or a great deal in the shops.
I suppose there’s nothing stopping you from using a commercially prepared juice, but I think the sweetness might be an issue. Having said that, I am not a fan of freshly squeezed orange juice, but the juice from these oranges was the sweetest I have ever tasted.