Plum/Prune jam

Hi there!

Wow, this week has just been flying by! But I love the cooler weather we've had in Switzerland. There's nothing quite like enjoying a warm cup of tea and treating yourself to whatever it is that makes you feel great. For my part that is savoring all the produce fall has to offer and get the best of the fruit. For example with this simple recipe from my godmother. It is super simple and super low-effort, but tastes great. I don't use a gelling agent for this one as I like this jam to be very soft and a little runny.

Here's the recipe:

about 3 kg (105 oz) plums or prunes, both work equally well; you need 2,5 kg (88 oz) pitted fruit
600g (2 + 2/3 cups; 21 oz) granulated sugar
1 cinnamon stick
2-3 cloves
1 empty tea bag

1) Wash your fruit, then pit it and cut it into small pieces, about 0,5cm (1/4 inch) wide. 

2) Preheat the oven to 175°C (350°F). Place the fruit and sugar on a baking tray and stir carefully, but thoroughly to distribute the sugar evenly. 

3) Cut the cinnamon stick in 3 pieces, then put on top of the fruit at different ends of the tray. Put the cloves into a tea bag and place them on the tray as well. This way it'll be a lot easier to remove them once the fruit is cooked.

4) Put the tray in the oven and let the fruit cook with for 1 hour.

5) Remove from the oven, take away the cinnamon stick and cloves and, working quickly, fill the jam into glasses all the way up to the top. Let the glasses cool head first. This way, you'll generate a vacuum which will help the jam to keep longer. 

Yield: I ended up with 7 glasses of about 250ml (1 cup) capacity
Active preparation time: about 20 minutes
Total preparation time: 1 hour and 20 minutes + cooling time (about 2 hours)

Here's how it looks:

You can play around with the amount of sugar depending on the quality of fruit you can get your hands on. My plums were fairly ripe and sweet, so I didn't add a lot of sugar. Most jam recipes call for 1kg sugar for 1kg fruit or at least 500g sugar for 1kg fruit. If you don't like cloves, you can easily omit them.

This is one of my favorite ways, besides cake, to work with fruit. And you can enjoy it so much longer. You can have a piece of fall for breakfast for a few more weeks. 

Have fun trying!