We have a bayberry tree in our garden. At first it was so much fighting with the surrounding trees it was small and not giving really fruits but now that we’ve trimmed trees around and at the foot remove all the weed and tiny bamboos it’s growing quite quickly and this year it is giving tones of fruits. A large part of them felt during the big storm early Saturday morning so I decided to harvest the one still on the tree and ripe enough, which means that I hervested 2kg of fruits. Bayberry are very similar to strawberry tree fruits but they are an Asian species. I only know the Asian version in syrup in cocktails in Asian restaurant when I was a kid! Actually they taste a little like cranberry while having a very different texture.
I didn’t know what to do with that many fruits thanks to IG followers advice and a bit of net browsing I managed to know how to prepare them:
- wash them under running water
- soak them 2h in slightly salted water to be sure there is no bug in: I collected a little worm only! Remove the stems.
- wash them and dry them with a clothe.
now they are ready for any preparation. I did some sugar syrup with 700g of fruits and 700g of block sugar. Now I just need to wait for the sugar to melt and for the syrup to be ready. The other thing I had in mind was jam. Unfortunately without any pectin it does jellify apparently so my jam ended up in an other syrup that I used right away and o make jelly for dessert adding just agar agar to the syrup and using a mold. I like my jelly no too stiff do I used little agar agar, and added a fruit in each piece. I have also used the same syrup for flavoring a cake for our breakfast tomorrow. I removed the seeds and added the pulp and syrup to a yogurt cake mix without any oil or butter in. I am sure there are many more variations to think about!!!
