When I first found out I was being sent some coconut jam to review my mouth immediately started watering and I literally started twitching with excitement.
Do you know why?
Because I love, and I mean really LOVE, Bounty bars and this is exactly how I imagined coconut jam to be; white, creamy and probably a bit naughty.
So, imagine how befuddled I was when it arrived and I was wrong on all accounts!
Buko, whose coconut water we reviewed back in April, are back with these brand new products, which they are calling ‘the UK’s First Organic Coconut Jam’. Available in three different flavours; Original, Sea Salt and Chocolate, the jams contain completely organic, natural ingredients that are gluten free, preservative free and are suitable for vegans.
In fact the Original coconut jam simply contains 2 ingredients:
- 58% coconut milk
- 42% coconut nectar
The Sea Salt adds in, as expected, a small % of sea salt, and the Chocolate flavour uses organic cacao to create a delicious spread rumoured to have a similar taste to Nutella, but obviously a lot better for you.
What does Coconut Jam look like?
Let me start by telling you what it doesn’t look like.
Coconut jam is not…
- White
- Hairy
- Fibrous
- Creamy
- Runny
Hmmmm OK, so what on earth does it look like then?
Well rather surprisingly, coconut jam is brown, very smooth and has a lovely shine to it, in fact it really looks like a jammy chocolate spread. It spreads really well and it’s easy to get out of the jar with a spoon, a knife or even your fingers (yes I confess, I did have a little finger dunk). It has quite an oily feel to it, but if you think about it coconut is by it’s very nature rather oil abundant and we all know how healthy that is for us, right?
What does it taste like?
The Original coconut jam has a very rich, deep flavour that has a kind of caramelised taste to it. An incredibly multi layered taste experience that starts off bizarrely tasting almost savoury, but then an intense sweetness kicks in followed by a nutty aftertaste. And the Sea Salt is, well I can only think of one word (and yep I’ve totally just invented this!) ‘droolish’ – it is that good that you only have to taste one little bit and you’re mouth starts to drool for more.
If you like a mixture of sweet and salty (which I totally do), then you are seriously going to LOVE this jam. It ramps the Original coconut jam up a notch and takes it to a whole other spread dimension. In fact, as I’m sat here writing this review I’m dipping my finger into the jar – purely for your benefit of course, it’s a tough job but someone’s got to do it 😉
Can I only spread it on my toast?
Well, sure you can put just it on your toast (it is particularly yummy on a big chunky slab of seeded toast), but why stop there when there is a whole heap of other things you can do with it.
Look what else you can do with coconut jam:
Spread it on pancakes- Add it to smoothies
- Use it as a cake filling or topping
- Use it as glue to coat energy balls before rolling in desiccated coconut, nuts etc.
- Amazing as a centre filling for flapjacks!
- Jam tart fillings
- Cereal/porridge topping
- As a snack – ridiculously good with breadsticks, oatcakes, banana and fingers. Honestly, once you’ve finger dunked you are going to need to hide the jar unless you can handle the food guilt of finishing the whole thing!
And as if the taste of the coconut jams isn’t enough to have you frantically typing Amazon into your keyboard, then the brands environmental kudos certainly will. Buko are not only registered with the Soil Association, but as part of their mission to help ‘save the world’ they have also teamed up with the preservation group Cuipo. For every jar of coconut jam that they sell, they promise to help save 1 square metre of rainforest, for more information about this check out Cuipo’s website.
