Steps

• You’ll discover that apart from the aromatic differences (my recipe is lemon-flavored and Evelin’s is cinnamon-flavored), the differences between the two recipes are not striking; the procedure in both cases is: juice+cornstarch+cooking+cooling.

  The substantial difference lies in the juice: the original jelly recipes (all the ones I’ve seen) involve using blended watermelon pulp or passed through a food mill (raw) and then filtered, while my recipe is in a sense an anti-waste recipe, born from the awareness that since watermelon is a particularly watery fruit… either you remove all the water that the marmalade produces, or you make the jelly the classic way. Then I wonder: but in that case… what happens to the pulp after filtering?…

  …eh I told you… it’s a loop!! 😀

  If I had started with the jelly, I would certainly have used the raw juice as in Evelin’s recipe, after which I would have decided to make the marmalade with the pulp I had left, since I would never have thrown it away.

  But since it happened that the idea of the marmalade occurred to me first, and I found myself mid-process with these two choices, either boil the marmalade for hours until the juice is gone, or remove the juice from the marmalade, I chose the latter. In short, thinking: “I’ll make the jelly with this juice” was an automatic thing. I’d dare to say there was no choice, given my anti-waste nature.

  And now that you’ve read all this preamble (did you really??), you also have the answer to what you surely wondered about when reading the ingredients: why is sugar missing from Catia’s version? Answer: It’s there, the marmalade was sweetened (so its juice was sweetened!).

  Conclusion: if making watermelon marmalade (made with pulp and without peels) is not in your plans, or if after reading up to here you’ve decided not to follow my example and venture into marmalade only after making the jelly, or if you simply don’t like cinnamon and prefer to use lemon, then make a mix of the two recipes and consider that the ratio between watermelon juice and sugar is: 250 g of juice + 20 g of sugar (except for different degrees of ripeness and sweetness of the watermelon that you will have to evaluate yourself).

  And here is – finally! you will say – the procedure!

• These two photos show the filtering of the marmalade to obtain the juice, and the jelly already thickened after cooking. 

  

• Pour the cornstarch into a saucepan.

  Add a small part of the juice (filtered and free of fibers and/or seeds) and mix well with a spoon until the cornstarch dissolves, making sure there are no lumps.

  Pour the rest of the juice. (Add sugar if using raw watermelon juice, but if using juice extracted from the marmalade, it’s not needed).

  Mix well.

  Add the lemon juice and grated zest.

  I used half a lemon but in hindsight, a whole lemon fits. Of course, it’s a matter of taste.

  Turn on the heat and bring to a boil while constantly stirring.

  When it thickens and takes on a shiny color, it’s ready. Just a couple of minutes are enough.

  Transfer into cups or single-serving pudding molds (with 250 g of juice, you get 2 molds).

  Let cool at room temperature, then store in the fridge for at least 2 hours.

• Enjoy! 🤩