What do you do with preserve recipes you try but don’t quite love?

For the January Citrus Food In Jars Mastery Challenge I made Lemon Lavender Marmalade from Emma MacDonald’s book Artisan Preserving. It calls for both lavender buds to be added and essence of lavender. I love lavender but I did find this combination to be particularly intense. It is good on toast with butter in smaller amounts. I am thinking I will try it in something butter or cream heavy to mellow that intensity and making it something rich and decadent to savor. Fingers crossed! Sometimes the first, second or even third iteration of a recipe isn’t quite “It” I did follow this first version up with a second, I made the same recipe but instead of lemons I used the blood oranges I had on hand. I also used the lavender buds in the “tea bag” with pith peel and seeds, and did not add essence of lavender. The result is a really pretty jelly with slivers of orange peels that has a sort of sweet bitter flavor I have to admit I cannot get enough of! The oranges I got are pretty bitter, above what is the norm for blood oranges. And when it is made like this it sort of blends with that tangy floral bite of lavender and gives a delicious sweet bitter bitter effect that is amazing on toast or bagels. It would be good on chicken or duck as well.

I also made another sweet-bitter marmalade using just blood oranges. I used this Blood Orange Marmalade recipe and whole orange process from the Food In Jars blog. I did add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract and 2 teaspoons of cinnamon at the tail end for a better flavor. While I like this one better then the intensity of the Lemon Lavender Marmalade…it wasn’t my favorite, something about that orange pith flavor note just doesn’t delight me. Smuckers Sweet Orange is my favorite to be honest. It converted me from a sometimes eater of marmalade to that is what I want on my toast for sure (that or lavender jelly!) There was quite a few jars that didn’t seal so I had to come up with what to do with that much marmalade in the fridge.

I had thought it might work in citrus cinnamon rolls and recalled that my sister had made cinnamon rolls from Paula Deen and that they were quite sweet which I thought would pair well with the marmalade. I used her printout of the recipe from the Food Network site. It is essentially the same as the one on her personal site but slightly different in wording. I made the recipe exactly as directed with two additions, I added 1/2 a pint or so of marmalade to the filling of the cinnamon rolls and another 3/4 or so to the glaze, and 1/4 cup of cream cheese went into the glaze as well to make it more like my mother’s cinnamon roll glaze. It baked up with no changes to time or heat and turned out well enough that my family polished the whole pan. My only warning here is you might want to double your recipe, and that marmalade glaze/filling will turn to the sturdiest glue you could imagine in cooking once those rolls are completely cool so get them free of the pan while warm! Overall a successful way to use a preserve I may not love and that excess if some jars don’t seal. I intended on taking pictures of the rolls…but they were inhaled. With requests for more so I may update this with pictures the next time I make this combination.

How do you use those excess or not so favored preserves you try?