I'm anxiously awaiting the responses to this post. I work with a woman who is nuts about blood oranges. She also happens to be a diabetic. I'd love to be able to give her something appropriate for next Christmas' Secret Santa.

A pinch of baking soda is added to reduce bitterness (American-style marmalade because we love our sweet, LOL). It's totally optional. I've never used it myself. The size of the pieces of peel affects the character of the marmalade. Finely shredded peel tends to "melt in" while larger squares or pieces retain a separate identity. That means as you consume the marmalade you'll be biting into candied peel, tasting a distinct combination of bitter and sweet. You can take any recipe and alter the size of the citrus pieces to suit your taste. Lots of marmalade recipes call for some proportion of sliced fruit. Again, it adds character and the candied slices look very pretty in the jar. Carol

Yes to both questions - you can process the first recipe as per any conventional marmalade and you can sub blood oranges for the Seville in the second recipe. Carol

I made my first batch of marmalade today!!!!! While it isn't going to be the best in the world since I had to use navel oranges (all that were available), it's still better than the cheap stuff on the grocery shelves. It was rather tedious trying to get the (uncooked) peels cut into the small strips I wanted. Finally, I put the peels into my food processor with the attachment that chews up carrots for carrot salad. It was still a difficult part of the process because they just didn't come out right. So the result was very large and very small pieces of the peeling in the marmalade. However, that's all right for the first time. When we've finished eating this batch, I think I'll just put the oranges in my food processor and chop them up coarsely after squeezing the pulp and juice into the pot. Then the seeds can go into a muslin bag and be cooked with the lot! Since I have so much of it and I don't put it into jam-jars for safe-keeping, I've decided to freeze it in pint containers. Ruthie, Thanks for the idea. One of my favorite cakes of all time is a Pig-Pickin' cake, which uses mandarin oranges in the cake itself and crushed pineapple in the frosting with the juice carefully poured on the cake layers with holes punched in them. I think I'll spread the marmalade on top of the cake and maybe even spread the pineapple icing on top of that.