Fig jam

Our family spent a week during school holidays in Adelaide, and we decided to drive via Hamilton. On the way through Vic was generous enough to offer figs from their main crop. Still a little green, we kept a banana with each 4L bucket for 48 hours to help ripening. With 3.7kg left after we’d ate a number, I used Taste.com.au easy fig jam recipe broadly. Cross checks with Mum and Stephanie Alexander’s “the cook’s companion” suggested raising sugar levels closer to 75% of fruit weight, especially given the fruit was not yet over-ripe. After sitting overnight in the largest stock pot, the fruit mix was quite a slurry, so I added no additional water (which is what Stephanie and Mum both suggested). Given what was on hand, the quantities of cinnamon and vanilla were about half the prescribed amount.

Stephanie’s recommendation is to test for setting once the jam gets to 105°C. This took more like 2 hrs, rather than the 45 minutes advised, which might have been due in part to the 15cm depth in the stock pot.

At 105°C the jam was thick and the mix tended to boil rapidly on stirring, as if the mix was too thick to boil. It was also spitty by this stage.

After bottling, I reheated the pot to scrape out the remainder, this thickened up a bit more as a result and formed something half way between toffee and a paste. Great on crackers.