Honey provides the sweetness for this jam; and it’s plenty sweet. It will be served with cheese boards (specifically with old, hard cheeses) and it’s sweetness will be easily cut with the fat of the cheese and the crunch of a thin cracker. I’m particularly excited about eating these around a fireplace on a chilly winter night.
This recipe is a very small yield (about 2 cups) and can be placed in 1 cup (half pint) jars or 0.5 cup jars. You can double or triple the recipe (but I haven’t tested it beyond that). We used light and dark figs and left them in fairly large hunks (each fig was cut into 3-4 pieces) as the chunks of skin will provide a neat texture for our cheese trays. You can cut them smaller or mash them in if you’d rather.
FIG JAM RECIPE (WITH HONEY) – INGREDIENTS
- 2-2.5 cups figs (1 pint)
- 0.74 cup honey
- 3 tablespoons water
- 2 tablespoon lemon
FIG JAM RECIPE (WITH HONEY) – INSTRUCTIONS
- Prepare waterbath (a big pot that has a rack on the bottom and has enough water to cover the jars and lids by at least 1 inch of water), prep lids (cover in boiling water) and sterilize jars (boil the clean jars without lids in the waterbath for 10 minutes).
- Add figs, honey and water to a pan on medium-high heat.
- Simmer until jam gels. You can test this multiple ways including temperature (the jam must be over 220 degrees), the drip test (jam should pour off a spoon in a stream as opposed to drip-by-drip) or the freezer test (place a small amount of jam in the freezer for 2 minutes; run your finger through it – if it stays divided, it’s set).
- Add the lemon juice, cook for one minute.
- Scoop any excess foam from the jam (we had none).
- Ladle into clean jars, wipe lids.
- Process in boiling waterbath for 5 minutes.