Marmalade festival to return this weekend with aim to find best spread for King's coronation

  • Watch as Isla Todd visits Penrith for the World Marmalade Festival

The World Marmalade Festival returns this weekend with a category to find a special spread for King Charles' coronation.

The festival is in its 18th year and returns to Penrith this weekend, with the aim of finding the best jar of marmalade in the world.

There are many different categories to find the best marmalade with some creative recipes entering the competition.

There is a special category to find the best marmalade for the coronation. Credit: ITV

Founder of the awards Jane Hasell-McCosh spoke about the journey she has been on in developing the event each year.

She said: "It has changed in its look from the beginning when I just had 60 pots to persuade my friends to give a very treasured pot into my competition. Now today we have these exquisite marmalades coming in with such attention to detail, which are absolutely fabulous. So it has changed enormously.

Jane has spoken of her delight at seeing her daughter take over managing the festival, she said: “My daughter Beatrice has taken over. She is now directing the festival and is bringing huge energy, youth and vitality to it. The event is now something quite vibrant and new."

There have been thousands of entries submitted from all across the world. A variety of different flavours have entered the competition this year including some that you would not traditionally associate with marmalade.

Director Beatrice Hasell-McCosh said: “We have almost 3,000 entries. They are all laid out in their categories. It is a whole world of different tastes and people say that marmalade is all the same but it is definitely not.

The festival has attracted entries from all across the world. Credit: ITV

“The squid ink one was surprisingly successful. It was very black.

"It has this delicious taste and one of our categories now is the McNabb category. So it is marmalade to be eaten with food though a particularly successful one had pork and shallots in it. You would not expect that to be a marmalade but it was absolutely delicious."

There is also a special category dedicated to finding the best marmalade for the King's Coronation.

Beatrice said: "The idea being we want to present his majesty with with the perfect marmalade to get his coronation off to a good start. That category had some amazing entries.”

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