Having a plum tree of this size is honestly both a blessing and a curse. That is, we were blessed with the delicious fruit when summer came, but cursed with the guilt of letting the rest rot after harvesting too many to handle. Like last year, I took the challenge head on this year and made plum sorbet, plum smoothies, plum frozen yogurt, and plum cake for everyone I knew. I’m sick of plums for now, but I’m excited about getting even more creative with plums next year.
Look at our enormous plum tree! I swear, it gets bigger every year. I learned from my neighbor that my entire neighborhood used to be a plum orchard.
I don’t think there’s anything quite as stunning as plum blossoms in spring.
After the flowers disappear, the tree quickly produces hundreds of cherry-sized plums. They’re cherry-sized because we don’t prune OR water the tree (tee hee). How this tree produces this much fruit after so much negligence is really beyond me.
When the fruit is ripe, it takes nothing more than a breeze to make the plums fall.
I spent a week picking, washing, and boiling down the fruit into a puree. It was an exhaustive process that STILL yielded way too much fruit to deal with. And that was only one week. Sadly, the plums were left to rot the other weeks. You can only do so much.
Because the plums were the size of cherries, it only made sense to use a cherry pitter. We used the one we received from OXO.
The cherry pitter worked like a charm. It took out some extra flesh at the bottom, but it was worth the sacrifice to go put that many plums in a short amount of time.
Thanks to Mike for patiently pitting them in the kitchen for me while I was boiling plum puree.
I figured boiling and blending down the plums into a puree, skin and all, was the easiest way to use them. They were difficult to eat fresh since they were mostly skin and pit, and keeping the plums in puree form kept it from rotting. I didn’t go through the canning process, so that week I ended up made an incredible amount of plum-flavored treats for everyone I knew.
10lbs of plums = approx 6 large jars of puree
Making plum cake is a great way to use up extra fruit preserves (the recipe uses two cups). I didn’t find a recipe for plum cake, so I used a recipe for Applesauce Cake. Surprisingly, it didn’t have overwhelming plum flavor, but it smelled great, and had a wonderful moist texture.
Plum Cake
Ingredients:
1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
2 cups brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/4 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
2 cups plum puree, or any fruit puree, sugar added to taste
1/2 cup raisins
1 cup chopped walnuts
Powdered sugar, optional
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
In a mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, cream the butter. Add the brown sugar and continue mixing. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, and vanilla, then mix until well blended and fluffy.
In a separate bowl, sift together the dry ingredients. Add to the creamed mixture alternately with the plum puree. Fold in the raisins and walnuts. Pour batter into a greased and floured loaf or tube pan and bake until firm to the touch, about 40 to 45 minutes. Let cool in the pan, then turn it out, and dust with powdered sugar.
Adapted from Applesauce Cake by Gale Gand
The cake was already pretty sweet, so all it needed was a little sprinkle of powdered sugar.
Then I made frozen yogurt, and WOW was that tart. It was tart not so much from the frozen yogurt (I used sweetened vanilla yogurt), but from the plums themselves. The flavor really came out in this one.
Plum Frozen Yogurt
Ingredients:
2 cups vanilla frozen yogurt
1 cup plum puree, sugar added to taste
Equipment:
Ice Cream Maker
Directions:
Combine all ingredients to bowl, and follow ice cream maker instructions.
And finally, I made plum smoothies. These were so good I brought one to work every morning that week. I used three tablespoons of plum puree for each smoothie.
Plum Smoothie
Ingredients:
3 tablespoons of plum puree, or any fruit puree (sugar added to taste)
1/2 cup skim milk
1/2 cup plain yogurt
3 tablespoons white sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
6 cubes ice, crushed
Directions:
In a blender combine strawberries, milk, yogurt, sugar and vanilla. Toss in the ice. Blend until smooth and creamy. Pour into glasses and serve.
Adapted from B and L’s Strawberry Smoothie
Do you have any suggestions on what I should do with plums next year? Let me know!
wow!! impressive how you made various plum foods and the tree is absolutely beautiful! love the photos too! :)
Thanks!
What do you put in with your puréed plums to preserve them? I have 4 trees………. all loaded.
I was given this recipe by Anonymous so I can not give you a link. I tried it yesterday and I would say it is very similar to a well known brown sauce. It needs two months to mature but I got an idea of the taste anyway. It was very easy to do. My plums are ripe enough I can just cut one side and pop the stone out it is quicker than my cherry de-stoner.
PLUM Sauce
4 lbs of plums or mirabelles washed and stoned (I imagine any plum will work)
6 oz stoned, chopped dates
4 oz raisins
1 large onion chopped
4 large cloves garlic chopped
2 oz fresh root ginger peeled and chopped
1 TBS coriander seeds
1 TSP allspice berries
1/2 TSP cayenne pepper
2 oz salt
2 pints malt vinegar or any other strong vinegar
1 TBS turmeric
10 oz sugar
1/2 nutmeg grated
Place the mirabelles, dates, raisins, onion, garlic, ginger, coriander seeds, allspice seeds, cayenne pepper, salt and 1 pint of vinegar into a large heavy based saucepan.
Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer till the fruit is very soft about 30-40 mins, leave to cool slightly.
Liquidise and sieve or put through a mouli and return sauce to a clean pan.
Add the remaining vinegar, turmeric powder, sugar and nutmeg.
Bring to the boil then simmer for 30 mins or until the sauce is thick.
Pour into sterilized jars and store for at least 2 months before using to give the sauce time to mature.
Diane
@Diane
Thanks for the recipe Diane! The ingredients sound really interesting. I don’t put anything in my plum puree right now – just trying to use it up before it goes bad.