Easy Plum Jam Recipe using my own fruit

Angela M - Garden Tea Cakes and Me August 20, 2011

Fresh plums from the garden and a very Easy Plum Jam recipe. Its been another good year for fruit in the garden, Blueberries, Strawberries, Raspberries, Plums and Apples have all done well. I guess the only exception being the Gooseberry bush which produced just the one lonesome Gooseberry! This week has been a busy week for picking plums the tree has been heavily laden with fruit again this year, only had one part of a branch break off with the weight of fruit, unlike last year when a rather large branch snapped.

Plum Jam Recipe

Fortunately the tree does not seem to be susceptible to plum moth and rarely will you find a grub in the plums. So with all this fruit there is only one choice of action and that's to make jam.

Easy Plum Jam

550gr of Plums (whole)

450gr Jam Sugar

3-5 tablespoons water

Knob of butter (optional)

Using a rather lazy recipe I wash and weigh the plums, put them whole into a large pot with water. That's right I don't bother cutting them in half and de-stoning them, as long as they are in good condition and of course grub free. Leave them to soften and stew on a low heat for quite some time, until they have softened and gone mushy, then add the sugar. Turn the heat up and keep stirring, you should notice the stones should float to the top for scooping out. Let the jam continue on rolling boil, I test to see if its is near to setting by placing a small amount on a cold plate and see if the jam wrinkles when you push your finger through it. Then its just a case of ladling it into the sterilised jam jars. If you think the jam has a lot of scum or froth on the top you can add a knob of butter and this will help disperse it

Making use of the free lid and
sticker handed out at last
year's Good Food Show

If I'm going to pass the jam on as a gift I like to go to the effort adding a nice label and a fabric cover to the top. Now what to make with the rest of those plums.

Other favourite recipes are plum sponge pudding, plum cordial, a sponge tray bake made with stewed plums this cake freezes well and of course there is plain old stewed plums. Would love to know any recipes ideas you may have for plums.

I couldn't resist showing you a couple of odd shaped plums found on the tree this year.