Marmalade thoughts

[magid]

queue's suggestion to make plum-ginger jam got me thinking of what else might go well with ginger in jam. And since I got a lot of citrus in last night's delivery, that seemed the likeliest suspect, making orange-tangelo marmalade with ginger in it.

Two issues:
1. I've never gotten marmalade to gel on its own, and for some reason* I suck at using powdered pectin. My usual solution for making things gel is to add some cranberries, which are very high in pectin (plus, I love cranberries). Obviously, this will change the color (though perhaps using less than a whole 12-oz bag would leave at least some golden color visible?) and flavor, but slightly bitter peel + tart cranberries + spicy ginger + sweet sugar syrup + citrus juice could equal something complex yet balanced and yummy. Maybe.

2. Most marmalade recipes I've seen call for boiling the peels at least once (sometimes more) and draining the water before then putting in juice and sugar and whatever else is going in. I think the oils in the zest are dimmed by this treatment. So I'm debating trying alternate methods to keep more of the citrus intensity: zest the citrus, boil in syrup, let cool, then use that to make the marmalade; or peel the fruit, scrape out the pith, and continue from there. I tend to like having a bit more thickness to peel in marmalade, but that adds bitterness as well.

Any marmalade-meisters with thoughts as to whether any of this would work?


* not being good at following cooking directions precisely may factor in here...