The Startled Badger is a fan of jam. Mostly Rhubarb jam (with ginger of course) but other flavours are acceptable too. Today’s experiment, however, was on behalf of Mrs Startled Badger who loves all things coconut.

The Recipe

This was barely a recipe, more of a hint!

Ingredients

• One coconut, drained, extracted and grated.
• Sugar, weighing the same as the prepared coconut.
• A very small amount of water, just enough to disolve the sugar.

Method

• Disolve sugar in the water.
• Add grated coconut.
• Boil for around 90 minutes stirring from time to time.

Outcome

One coconut produced 225g of grated flesh and at the end I had one jar of jam from this process. The coconut was 69p from Tesco - not an expensive experiment!

Two or three times, while boiling it, the mixture got very close to completely dry (evaporation) so I added a splash more water.

After 90 minutes, it appeared almost entirely unchanged from how it was 10 minutes after adding the coconut. No evidence of the coconut softening more or breaking down in any way.

The final result is a very tasty mixture of shredded coconut and sugar in a sticky pile. The sort of thing you might top small biscuits with or something like that. I’m not sure you’d call it jam really (well, for me jam is something you spread on bread!).

I did notice after the fact (while searching online for other recipes to compare with this one) that most recipes suggest taking the thin brown skin off the coconut flesh after shelling it. I didn’t bother and you can see the tiny flecks of brown in the resulting jam. I doubt it will affect the flavour but I guess it would have been a more impressive pure white if I’d bothered to take it off. A vegetable peeler appeared to be the recommended method.

I was also a bit unclear on the use of the coconut water. Given that this is made from a fresh coconut, there’s some coconut water in it to start with. The recipe did not appear to use this, so I didn’t. I wonder why it wouldn’t be used instead of (or in addition to) the water added at the start? Maybe I’ll try that next time.

Verdict

At this point, we don’t have a conclusive verdict. It was a bunch of effort to make, both the grating by hand and watchfully boiling for 90 minutes. We haven’t used it yet so can’t judge if it’s worth the effort. Will update when we eventually use it..