Plum Butter

We got a call from Karuna last week saying she had hecka plums, so on Saturday, we went to Karuna and Evan's house last week to pick some.

After an hour climbing around in her trees, we ended up with about 30 pounds of fruit.

The plums were slightly larger than ping pong balls and very sweet, with tart skins. We decided we'd make Plum Butter.

The first step is to cook the plums a little bit so they start to fall apart. The recipe called for cutting them in half, but we had literally hundreds of them and weren't about to do all that. We just put a little water in the bottom of the pot and let the heat take care of the rest.

Periodically we'd smash and stir them until they were all pretty mushy. At this point we ran them through our new food mill to separate the pits and skins.

The result was a juicy, pulpy slush. We poured it back into the pot and saved the pits and skins for the chickens.

For each cup of pulp we added a third cup of sugar, then we cooked (and cooked, and cooked) until it thickened up. Once it reached the right consistency we were ready to can it.

After ten minutes in the hot water bath it was ready to go.

It turned out very well. It's tart and plummy, and is great on french toast with creme fraiche.

One piece of advice for all you would-be plum butterers--don't start this process at 7 at night. We didn't finish until 5 in the morning.

--Ian