It is currently the season for Danish plums, which, due to our changing weather conditions, are considered some of the world’s best.
The plum is a small stone fruit with smooth skin and sweet flesh. It bears the Latin name “Prunus domestica,” and they come in many different colors: red, yellow, blue, purple, and green. They grow on a small tree where the hanging fruits are the plums. The peak season for Danish plums is from August to the beginning of October.
If you have one or more plum trees in your garden, you know that the harvest yield in good summers is large. It is often impossible to eat your way through the large quantities of raw plums, and since the fruit has a short shelf life, it makes sense to find other ways to enjoy the delicious plums a little longer. Fortunately, there are many ways to do this, as the plum is excellent for pickling, canning, freezing, and even juice production.
What can you make from the plums?
If you want to freeze your plums, you should halve them and remove the stones. Put them in freezer bags and freeze them. The shelf life is at least 1 year in the freezer. Thawed plums are suitable for all forms of cooking and canning but cannot be eaten raw because they will be very soft after a stay in the freezer.
Plums are also really good in jam and preserves, where the finished product is delicious on bread and rolls, with pancakes, or on top of yogurt/oatmeal. See the recipe here.
If you want to make something a little more refined than jam, then pickled plums are the way to go. Here, raw, pitted plums are covered with an alcohol/sugar syrup, which gives flavor to the plums. These delicious plums make a delightful dessert with ice cream or whipped cream. See the recipe here. Another option is to make a plum crumble. We have a recipe for that here.
Are you also tired of the boring supermarket cordials? Try making your own plum juice, which tastes a thousand times better than anything you can buy. Get the recipe here. The leftovers from juice production can also be used in a plum trifle, which is a wonderful fruit dessert with fruit compote, whipped cream, and macarons. See the recipe here.
For many years, we Danes have also enjoyed plum sauce, which gives you a sweet and tangy sauce that pairs well with, for example, vanilla ice cream. We have a recipe for the sauce here.
A final suggestion for using homegrown plums is to make prunes. The ripe plums are washed, halved, and pitted. They are then placed on baking trays with parchment paper and baked in the oven for 10-12 hours at 50 degrees Celsius. Let them cool and store them in the refrigerator.