Meet Texas Winner Confituras

Posted on Tuesday, April 5th, 2011 in Preserves by Heather Hammel

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Stephanie McClenny launched Confituras in September 2010, after teaching herself to preserve over the past two years. She now sells her jams and marmalades at farmers markets and specialty stores in her area, but is still a one-woman operation, with a little help on Saturday morning market days. Her products highlight fruit seasonal in Central Texas, where she strives to source most of her ingredients.

When I caught up with Stephanie, she was amidst phone calls in a desperate search for organic strawberries in her region of Central Texas. The berries were just starting to come in that week, and she was finding it more difficult than one would imagine to source organically. She owes part of that problem to her region —“I grew up in California,” she said. “This is not California…[organic farms out here] often don’t produce enough to sell the fruit.”

Still, Stephanie has a pretty impressive success story. “Preserving is not in my family history,” she said. But it seemed “like a natural outflow from just enjoying cooking.” After two years of teaching herself how to preserve, she launched Confituras in September and has sold out at the Austin farmers market almost every week since. Her recent Good Food Award “has provided some wonderful notoriety as well as loads of community support from Austin and nationwide,” she said. As she earns recognition across the country, Stephanie still remains very locally oriented. “We are proud to live and thrive in our own ‘good food community’ in Austin,” she said. “We shop at the market from which we sell.”

As such, her product is reflective of Central Texas growing seasons and owes much to the Mediterranean climate of the region, she said. Specifically, the region boasts two flushes of figs, which she loves to use in her preserves. A season in late June and early July brings in a smaller crop while the big season at the end of summer yields hoards of Texas everbearing figs, a small, soft, light brown fruit which she used in her award-winning Texas fig preserve.

Figs are one of Stephanie’s favorite flavors, versatile enough to be paired with nuttier, creamy goat cheeses, balsamic vinegar and honey. Figs “are so fleeting and they don’t ripen after you pick them…you have to use them in 24-48 hours,” she said. “They’re special: they work well with different flavors — honey, liqueurs and other fruits, like strawberries.”

That she is having trouble finding strawberries right now is beside the point. While she said that it’s not always as easy to find organic sustainable farms in Texas, she has hopes that it will pick up in the future. They’re “just used to doing things a certain way… But I don’t mean to say that we haven’t found people,” she said. And when I checked up on her weekly offerings a couple of weeks later, she had strawberry vanilla bean jam listed alongside Rio Star grapefruit marmalade and Valencia orange and chili arbol marmalade.