coconut vanilla jam

After trying coconut vanilla jam in Noumea last year, I was interested in finding a recipe for it.

To my surprise as I was flipping through Christine Ferber's book, she had a recipe for coconut vanilla jam.

My problem with the recipe was that she used fresh coconut...yup, crack it open, scrape out the flesh, save the milk....where the heck would I find a whole coconut in Japan?

I decided to ad-lib. I had coconut for baking. I bought some coconut milk. I used the last half of the Lifou vanilla that I had bought in Noumea.

I adjusted the recipe. The taste was just like what I remembered, though the texture could have been a little softer.

I think if I used something thinner like coconut flakes instead of coconut strips it would have turned out softer. I also think it needs to be a bit more syrupy.

We tried it on toast for breakfast yesterday, but I think it may be better baked in a nice flaky crust or maybe with some dark chocolate covering it....

It is Halloween today but it isn't celebrated much here, though the stores surely take advantage of making some money from it. If you are celebrating the day, have fun but be safe, oh we have another 3-day weekend here, hope you have a good one.