Plum Conserve

I have been wanting to write a post for about a month now, but this amazing late summer/early fall we've been having in the Hudson Valley has me busy with other things. I'm not complaining! But today, as I soak in the hot sun--it's hitting 80 today--I realize we are very close to the end. I am almost done with closing the garden up, the fig trees have been replanted in their winter pots, and stink bugs are crawling everywhere. It's inevitable that every time we have a last burst of heat, some bug frenzy happens. Last year it was lady bugs, this year, stink bugs. I can feel it everywhere as I walk around my yard. The maples are turning yellow, the purple asters are lining the hill, the goldenrod surrounds the pond, and the bees are busily making haste. I have heard from various places that this year is going to be a snowy and cold winter. Have you noticed all the woolly bear caterpillars out this year? I am seeing them everywhere: fat black ones, little fuzzy black and brown ones, and one huge white one. I haven't seen so many in years.

There is a small cool breeze that underlies the heat of the sun today. It riffles the leaves, and they slowly fall, lazily coating the ground. The neighbor's rooster crows, and the buzz of the bugs seems muffled. Birds call, and dogs whine, chainsaws buzz and trucks lumber by. It's lazy but focused, it seems. The word portentous comes to mind. Everything seems to remind me that quite soon I won't be sitting on the porch sipping a beet-carrot-apple-ginger juice in a t-shirt and shorts.

Even the preserving has slowed down a bit, although this batch of plum conserve is on the stove top as I write. Made with some gleaned tiny blue prune plums, I was looking to make something that was rich and cozy for the coming winter. I asked folks on my Facebook page what I should make, and there were a few good ideas! I have saved some plums to make the kuchen that Rosemary posted.

I adapted this from a recipe for Nutty Plum Conserve from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. I removed a bit of sugar (and must admit, it still seems a bit sweet), used currants instead of raisins, and added Pisa liqueur, which is a nutty liqueur similar to Amaretto.

Plum Conserve
yields 5 half-pints, with a little extra for the fridge

2.5 pounds of blue prune plums, halved and pitted
2 cups sugar
1 cup dried currants
1 tablespoon of lemon juice
1/2 cup candied citrus peel
1/4 cup orange juice
1 cup coarsely chopped mixed nuts
1/2 cup Pisa liqueur

If your plums are large, quarter them. If they are small, keep them halved. Put plums, sugar, currants, juices and peel in your jam pot and bring them to a boil. While this is cooking, soak the nuts in the liqueur. Let the plum mixture boil for about twenty minutes; they should foam up a bit, and then get glossy and thick. Add the nuts and liqueur, bring back to a boil, and cook for another ten minutes making sure not to scorch the bottom. Process for ten minutes.

Jam Cake

Now that the new canning has begun, there are a few old jars (by old, I mean from late last summer) that need to be used up. I canned a lot of plums last year, and I'm on my last four jars of jam. And of course, there are quite a few open jars in the fridge from all of this year's work. The other day, early in the morning I made this cake. It's very moist and dense, due to the jam and olive oil. Not a refined cake for company necessarily, but a perfect breakfast cake.

Mix in a large bowl:

1 1/2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

Whisk until light:

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup olive oil

Add in and beat well:

3 large eggs

Then add in:

1/4 cup or milk or yogurt

Add the flour mixture into the egg mixture.

Then beat in:

1 half-pint of jam

Bake at 350 degrees in a 9-inch plain tube cake pan for thirty minutes. Let cool at least ten minutes before unmolding.

Apricot Plum Jam with Orange Pectin

Before full-on pantry raiding happens, the big freezer clean-out must occur. That is to say, that all the goodies in the freezer have to be canned or eaten. Particularly before a shipment of forty pounds of local chicken meat comes to roost. I'm a bit of a hoarder, so I still had two big bags of apricots and plums from last fall. Instead of doing small batches, I took them out in one fell swoop by combining the two. I feel that apricots and plums go incredibly well together. And because I had a jar of orange pectin in the freezer too, I figured I'd make the jam with that.

Apricots don't have much by way of pectin, but they have a nice level of acidity. Plums vary on pectin, and I've read a lot of varying reports on that. I think it's safe to say that if you have a sweet plum, say the black ones, you don't have a lot of pectin. I was working with a tart but sweet Santa Rosa, which are just a gorgeous pinky-peach color. I didn't want the orange pectin to overpower the flavor of the fruit, so I used much less than the ratio of the jelly I made with orange pectin, hence, it wasn't as firm.

This jam took forever to jell. It was sheeting like mad, however, not quite at the wrinkle stage, but I pulled it because it seemed to be overcooking and the flavor was changing from that fresh fruit stage to a more sugared fruit stage. After sitting, it still is a soft set but holds together nicely on toast. It's a real soft spread, as they say. It's a gorgeous carnelian color, and although sweet--even though the sugar ratio is quite low--it retained its punchy acidity, thanks to the fruit.

I thought about these measurements for a while and I'm still not entirely sure of them. I didn't add lemon juice, because the pectin has a bunch in it. I think if you are looking for a firmer set, you might want to have equal amounts pectin to fruit, so I should have had eight cups. That would have been too much for my pot. Next time I might make a much smaller batch.

4 cups plums, halved and drupe removed

4 cups apricots, halved and, or you can say, pits removed

4 cups of sugar

2 cups of orange pectin

Bring all to a boil. How long it will take? Who knows. I pulled this at about 219 degrees? I leave that up to you, mon frere. Process in hot jars for ten minutes.

Plum Ginger Cake with Lemon Vanilla Jelly Glaze

Reading the posts from the last few days paints a picture that somehow I subsist on a diet of jelly. Which is probably not so far from the truth in relation to other folks, but I do eat healthy meals consisting on brown rice and legumes and meat and vegetables. Really! But winter beckons with its snowy claw and so I'm forced (forced!) to stay inside and create sweet concoctions. That's the view from the kitchen. Just yesterday it was all green and muddy. Sigh. I know, it's still January!! Leave winter be!

A much needed ray of sunshine: Lemon Vanilla Jelly. I did a small batch with some leftover apple extraction from the Tangelo Lemongrass Jelly I made for month one of the Tigress' Can Jam (follow link on sidebar for more on that). I didn't have any half-pint jars left, so I used a pint jar. My yield was a pint jar, sealed, and a half-pint in the fridge. A pint jar of jelly is an absurd thing. That's a lot of jelly, people.

1 cup of apple pectin extraction (see linked recipe above for directions)

1 cup of fresh squeezed lemon juice

2 cups of sugar

1/3 of a vanilla bean pod, scraped

Combine all in a pan and bring to boil. Boil until jell point is reached, 220 degrees, about ten to fifteen minutes. This one jelled up quick! Can and seal, process for fifteen minutes. (I would do ten minutes for half-pints.)

It tastes tart and lemony, not too sweet, a delicate but firm set, and a hint of vanilla wafting through. Great tart glaze, I'll bet. And so...

So, what? So: I made this little cake based on my quick Lime Curd Cake recipe, but subbed plum ginger preserves in for the curd. The preserves were from this summer, rosy pink, tart and spicy, made from local Santa Rosa plums and Stayman Winesap apples. I glazed the cake with a spoonful of jelly heated and turned to syrup.

I was going to dust it with confectioner's sugar, but it was too pretty to cover with snow. There's enough of it outside!

Apple Plum Star Anise Jelly

I think I'm running out of things to wax poetic about regarding jelly without sounding like a crazy person. I was thinking about this jelly all day. I couldn't wait to make it. I have no idea what my obsession is about. I have more jelly in the fridge than I know what to do with. Even I know that there is only so much jelly one can eat. Friends are starting to get worried. I complained about Steve's collection of horseradish (three jars!) and he merely pointed to the collection of strange jellies taking over the top shelf. Sigh. There are worse things to obsess over, but that's all in the past now. Moving forward.

This recipe is loosely adapted from Christine Ferber's Green Apple and Wild Prune Jelly. Considering there are no green apples or wild prunes in it at all, and her recipe didn't have star anise, I think it's safe to say it's my recipe. I think she'd agree. However, I used hers as a guideline for measurements, which I messed with anyway.

2 1/4 pounds apples, Ida Red preferably

2 1/4 pounds plums, Santa Rosa are so nice

8 1/2 cups of water

2 tbsp. of lemon juice

4 cups of sugar

4 whole star anise

Chop apples into quarters, peel and all, and place in a good heavy pot. Add halved, de-stoned plums and cover with the water. Once this reaches a boil, lower the flame and let simmer for about thirty minutes or so. Fruit will be good and soft. Filter the juice through a sieve. Then filter a second time using a cheesecloth; it's best to do this overnight in the fridge.

Bonus! I ended up with 8 1/2 cups of juice. I froze 4 1/4 for future jelly; and used the other 4 1/4 for this recipe. Take the 4 1/4 cups of juice, add the sugar and lemon juice and bring to a boil. Add star anise. It's a good idea to use a candy thermometer. Bring the temperature up to 220 degrees.

Put the hot liquid into your (already hot) jars and process for ten minutes. This made five half pints.