Making Plum Jam

[leedarkwood]

Sell Overseas Property

Are you knee deep in plums begging to be used?

Try here for some very good tips!

http://www.epinions.com/content_3377700996

[Cameo]

Sell Overseas Property

Were you spying on me last year when I did this???? All sounds suspiciously like my escapades.

[leedarkwood]

Sell Overseas Property

Further notes on plums. Bulgaria has a lot of plums.....

So we picked a half carrier bag of small yellow and some small red plums, plus I added into the bag 12 unripe apples. These I picked over for bad fruit, washed and dumped into the big stock pot. I quartered and cored the apples, and later regretted that I didn't peel them. I boiled them all up until soft, and when cool ran the whole lot through my big juicer, the first time through this removed all the stones, and then I ran the pulp side through again to remove more of the thick sticky juice. Keep the remaining pulp from this second run for later use.

The juice was sweetened to taste, I like to keep it fairly sharp for this recipe, and then carefully put on layers of cling film into my dehydrator. If you have enough suitable containers, baking trays etc, you can put it on cling film in them, cover with teaclothes and put in the sun, if you also have somewhere dog and cat proof! Dry until the fruit leather is dry enough to roll up but still slightly tacky on the top. Store rolled up in the cling film in a plastic container or biscuit tin, and cut off a slice when you want a treat, food for walking etc, it will last for months if the kids don't find your stash!

Meanwhile you can take the remaining pulp, rub it through a sieve to get the apple peel out (or peel apples in first place, so recommended!) and boil up with an equal quantity cup for cup with sugar, until it jams, (that is if you have a themometer at 9 degrees C above the boiling point for where you live, here that means 104 degrees C! ). Or test on a cold plate by leaving a blob to set and pushing it round to see if it wrinkles. This plum and apple spread tastes like it would make a really good glaze on a ham or a roast bird, be good instead of apricot jam on a christmas cake under the mazipan, or just have it on toast. Made three jars of spread, plus a lot of fruit leather.