The Allotment Cooks A-Z Recipe Book. I'm famous for my Banana Rum Jam Recipe!

I'm famous!

Well, not exactly. When we took on our allotment 2 years ago I joined a Facebook Allotment Cooks Group. The good people in the group share lots of great recipe ideas for using up your allotment fruit and veg. I shared some too. Then clever Jayne Hickling put them all together in this fab book and got it published. And to my delight: my Banana Rum Jam recipe made it in there!

When I say 'mine', it was adapted from someone else's. But it was so long ago that I can't remember whose it was. Sincere thanks to that person, and sorry not to give you credit for the original recipe I fiddled with.

I thoroughly recommend The Allotment Cooks: A-Z Recipe Book if you have an allotment. With over 200 recipes in produce order, you're bound to find your ideal recipe for any of the produce you grow.

Now admittedly, I don't grow many bananas on our allotment.

I don't think anyone does in the UK, actually. So my Banana Rum Jam was a bit of a cheat. I really donated it to the group as an utterly delicious way to use up ripe bananas.

So here's the recipe for Banana Rum Jam featured in the book. This is sublime on toast. Needless to say: it is entirely calorie free. Cough.

Banana Rum Jam Recipe

Ingredients

2lbs ripe Bananas*

3 3/4 cups brown sugar

1 1/3 cup water

Juice of 3 limes/lemons/mixed

1 tsp ground cinnamon

3 tbsp pure vanilla extract OR 1 tsp vanilla bean paste

a dash of powdered ginger

1/4 cup Rum

Method

Peel and mash the bananas and put to one side. Put all the other ingredients except the rum into a saucepan and stir over moderate heat until it forms a syrup and begins to thicken.

Add the mashed bananas and cook for 20/25 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the rum about 8 minutes before the end to burn off the alcohol but keep the rummy flavour.

Pour into hot, sterilised jars and seal - you'll find the easy way to sterilise jars here.

Makes about 2 small jars.

* When you have bananas becoming over-ripe, just pop them straight into the freezer with skins on. Then get them out to make this recipe, or banana loaf, or any cooked banana recipe. That way they're never wasted but they don't need to get to the 'condemned' stage before you're ready to use them. 

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