I often get lucky lately with friends and family handing me small bags of produce and them waiting for “I’ll can it and give you a jar” response from me. I have been “eye-spying” the kiwi at the farmers market since we are almost passed the season and I haven’t tried to do a jam or something with it’s fantastic flavor. On Tuesday, a familiar face came to my office and plopped a bag of the lovely fruit right on my desk. It was fate and when I asked if they were for me or the office to share, the answer was just as I figured. “Can you do something with these?” Oh you bet I can!
For the last few days I have been investigating recipes that use kiwi to see what spices and other ingredients they are using. Always mindful of not overpowering the flavor I found a lot of choices but waffling until I put the cut up fruit in the pot, opened my pantry of spices and saw the new Vietnamese Cinnamon from Penzey’s that came in on Monday.
Now a new trick I have is to take a little of the spice and dip a small piece of the fruit in it to see how the two taste together. The velvety flavor of the Cinnamon, which also tasted like it had a bit of vanilla, was a great combination and just enhanced the more “banana” quality I find in a kiwi. It changed the color of the kiwi mixture but the taste and consistency after a bit of using the immersion blender was “spot on”. Here is the recipe:
Cinn-full Kiwi Jam
Ingredients
- 10 pc. Kiwi fruits – peeled, halved, sliced (3 cups)
- 1 1/2 cups cane sugar
- 1/2 T. Vietnamese Cinnamon from Penzey’s spice catalog
Instructions
- In a bowl place prepared kiwi and ½ cup of the cane sugar, cover with plastic overnight to macerate the kiwi. You can skip this step if your kiwi are super ripe.
- Macerating fruit brings out its juices and enhances its natural sweetness with minimum effort. Sliced strawberries, peaches and nectarines as well as raspberries and blackberries respond very well to maceration.
- In a dutch oven or non-reactive pot place kiwi, remainder of sugar, and cinnamon and heat till boiling. Stir frequently.
- After 15 minutes the mixture will start to get a bit thicker. You can mash the kiwi more by using a masher or using an immersion blender breaking up some of the pieces. By doing this your recipe will get thicker. Continue to cook to the desired consistency.
- Sterilize two half pint jars, lids and rings. Ladle mixture into jars and process in water bath for 10 minutes.
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