This oven roasted spiced plum butter is a delicious way to preserve early autumn plums. Also known as pflaumenmus, it’s a traditional German preserve that is very much worth making.
I first discovered The Wednesday Chef sometime in early 2006. I had become an avid reader of blogs about a year before (they were a great way to keep my mind off my terrible day job) and was always on the hunt for new sites to add to my list of bookmarks. Luisa’s voice and perspective on food resonated with me immediately. I spent a morning engrossed in her archives and once caught up, tried never to miss a new post.
In fact, it’s fairly safe to say that I’ve read nearly everything that Luisa Weiss has ever posted to the internet (I hope that doesn’t make me sound like a stalker. I swear, I’m just a fan). And, when an advanced copy of My Berlin Kitchen arrived just before the mini-vacation that Scott and I took few weeks back, I tucked it into my travel bag and proceeded to read it in a single, giant gulp.
As I read, I dog-eared recipes I wanted to remember. I marked the Pizza Siciliana and the Poppy Seed Whirligig Buns. I’m hoping to make the Yeasted Plum Cake before their season is entirely gone and, come Christmas, I’m definitely planning on making the Fruit Bread on page 161. It sounds dense and divine.
As I read, there was one recipe that jumped out at me more insistently than the rest and cried out to be made immediately. The Pflaumenmus or Spiced Plum Butter on page 237 had my name written all over it (particularly since I had the necessary four pounds of Italian prune plums at home, thanks to the Washington State Fruit Commission and their Canbassador program).
Of course, I’ve made plum butters before, but never with this particular technique. Luisa has you quarter the plums, stir them together with a bit of sugar, a cinnamon stick, and a couple cloves and let them sit overnight. The next day, once they’re nice and juicy, you pop the pan into the oven and bake them them at moderate heat.
After their time in the heat, the plums are incredibly tender and fragrant. The liquid has thickened a great deal and the slumping fruit just smells incredible.
Once pureed, she has you funnel the prepared butter into sterilized jars and use the inversion method to seal. This is the only place where I diverged from the recipe as written and I chose to run my jars through a boiling water bath for 10 minutes. Because this is a relatively low sugar preserve, I wanted to ensure that all bacteria was killed and the best way to do that is with a hot water bath.
Now, just a note about the yield. The recipe says that it makes four to five jars, but doesn’t specify the sizes of those jars. I found that after pureeing, I had exactly enough butter to fill three pint jars. I imagine the jars Luisa used were a bit smaller than a standard pint and so figure my yield was just about right (I did the math and found that had I used the 1/5 L Weck jars, I’d have filled exactly five jars).
I plan on applying this same overnight maceration and oven roasting to other fruits, because it made for such a nice finished product and filled my apartment with the most delicious smells.
Disclosure: Viking sent me an advanced copy of My Berlin Kitchen and are providing the copy for this giveaway. However, I’ve not been paid to host this giveaway and my opinions are entirely my own.
Spiced Plum Butter
Ingredients
- 4 pounds Italian prune plums
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 2 whole cloves
Instructions
- Pit and quarter the plums and put them in a heavy 4-quart pot. Add the sugar, the cinnamon stick, and the cloves. Stir well and let sit overnight or four 8 hours.
- The next day, heat the oven to 350 degrees. Put the pot, unlidded, into the oven and cook for 2 hours, stirring the mixture occasionally.
- Sterilize the glass jar and lids in boiling water.
- When the plums have broken down and the liquid has reduced to a thick jam, remove pot from the oven and fish out the cinnamon stick (if you can find the cloves, fish them out too).
- Puree the jam with an immersion blender until it resembles a fruit butter, and then fill the sterilized jars with the hot puree, screw on tops and immediately turn the jars upside down. If you prefer a jam with discernible chunks of fruit, however, don’t puree the jam; simply ladle the hot jam into the sterilized jars.
- Let the jars cool complete before turning the right side up again and labeling them. The jam will keep for at least a year.
(Marisa’s note: You can also process the jars in a boiling water bath canner for 10 minutes if you’d prefer to do it the American way.)
Recipe from My Berlin Kitchen: A Love Story (with Recipes) by Luisa Weiss, published by Viking, 2012.
my favorite food memory is cooking with my grandmother. she is an amazing cook and i hope to pass on her recipes to my kids someday 🙂
I love to read and cook, winning this would be awesome.
My favorite memory was cooking fried chicken with my grandmother.
When I was a little girl, my grandmother worked at a small German bakery. My mom used to take my brother and I there to see “where Gramma worked” and we would get to “help” put pastries in the oven and of course we always got a chance to sample the yummy treats. My favorite was the sour cream kuchen and the apple cinnamon filled donuts they made in the fall. Yum.
one of my favorite food memories is my dad letting me pick out the pickle from the enormous barrel at the deli. he’d slice it when we got home and we’d eat all of it with our sandwhiches. happy birthday dad! i miss you.
My favorite food memory – just 2 weeks ago I taught my daughter how to make peach butter. Since I had it in the crock pot overnight the whole house filled with the fragrance of peaches and cinnamon. She woke up the biggest smile on her face that I had ever seen. Much better than waking the kids to the smell of bacon!
My favorite food memory is when at christmas time we would have fresh polish kielbasa, and love the cheese pierogi what a treat. and all bake goods of course!
My grandparents would hang long sweet red peppers in their garage until they dried out and then would fry them in olive oil until crispy. Then we would put a ton of salt on them and eat them with eggs. They were one of the best things I have ever eaten in my life and have never been able to duplicate them.
So many in mind, but plum cake is one of them. I had been
trolling the web for the perfect recipe that matched the one
my Mom made growing up. Luisa’s looks amazing and is on
my to do list.
Having made many jars of plum butter, preserves, sauce and syrup in August, I have to agree that it is a wonderful treat now and will be even more so this winter. I would really enjoy reading the book now that my canning evenings are slowing. Thank you for all of your insights and help.
My grandmothers and their friends would get together during the holidays for ‘cookie exchanges’. I remember baking all kinds of different treats for these parties and we brought home even more than we took. I miss those days. Just to have the time…..
My favorite food memory isn’t so much as a memory as a continuing tradition. My Oma makes plum jam, pretty much exactly like your recipe, every year. We eat it all year long. On New Year’s Eve she makes what we call pummelschens. They are yeast donuts (without the hole) filled with her plum jam. They get fried to a golden brown and rolled in granular sugar. We have them on New Year’s Day. The last several years my sisters and I have helped make the pummelschens. We want to carry on the tradition.
I love your website and check it every day! I can a little here and there, but would like to do more and love your concept of canning in small amounts. I am interested in trying some of your plum canning recipes and the idea of cooking down the fruit in the oven would allow me to do other things at the same time – like take care of our four daughters.
my favorite food memory is my mothers bread pudding. We would eat it warm with half and half. Yum !! My mother was killed in a car accident 12 yrs ago and I have tried making it – it is good -but never as good as hers !!
Picking wild blueberries in Northern Minnesota. Any summer I don’t get to do this isn’t a real summer.
My favorite food memory is making seven apple pies with my mother over the course of a weekend in an attempt to use up the bounty of our trees that were perfectly ripe. Our house smelled delicious for days!
Mmmm, food memories. My mom teaching me to cook, my grandma’s three day bean soup, my aunt’s perfect ham rolls…
Food is such an important part of so many fun memories! I think my favorite is from the yr My husband & I were married. We had a rare southern snow that was a few inches deep but in the south enough to shut everything down. My midwestern husband was thrilled. He packed us a picnic, took me to the top of a nearby mountain overlooking the city & laid it out on a large flat tree stump. We had hot soup with crackers, fresh sandwiches & hot chocolate. I remember being so cold, laughing & enjoying the gorgeous winter views. We’ve shared a lot of meals together since then that have been just as special.
Most of my food memories stem from hanging out at my parents’ restaurants over the years. I still remember the smell of pizza in the oven while sitting at a booth with a coloring book and crayola.
My favorite food memory is making Christmas cookies with my family. Every year we gat together and make a giant batch of sugar cookies, them frost and decorate them. Everyone gets to take some home and Grandma keeps the rest at her place for visitors.
So lovely!
My favorite food memory is the last Thanksgiving when my grandma was alive. We did it at her house (it’s almost as if we knew it would be her last one) and she was so happy to have everyone in her house. She was beaming with love. What a great memory.
My favorite food memory is making cookies with my family every Sunday!
My grandma always had a candy dish and a nut dish, but best of all, she kept in stock, especially for me, a little crock full of what she called “stinky cheese” (bleu cheese).
She would rave to her friends how, even as a toddler, I would prefer the stinky cheese to the sweets! As an adult with wee babies I lived 7 hours away from her, but when she came to visit, she always brought me that little crock of stinky cheese and a homemade lasagne and a beer cake! I miss my Grandma!
Just one favorite memory…it is too hard to pick just one as my favorites always revolve around those whom I love. My father making waffles before church, my brother and me eating hot rice with milk and honey for breakfast, or my mother making plum blackberry jelly in the summers.
One of my favorite food memories has to be when I was 3 or 4 years old – I was in Disneyland with my family and my Dad bought me one of the giant pickles on Tom Sawyer Island. It was almost as tall as my face! I have had a deep-rooted love of pickles ever since!
My favorite food memory is making Spritz Cookies for Christmas with my mom and brother using a cookie press. They were my favorite cookie and so much fun to decorate.
My favorite food memories involve cooking on campfires while in the woods under skies filled with so many stars.
My favorite food memory is a family story rather than an actual memory of mine. When I was about a year old my grandfather gave me a chicken leg bone which had been cleared of all meet and gristle. I can see myself gnawing on that bone in my high chair.
After re-reading that memory it sounds a little strange, but believe me in my head its a great memory.
My grandmother always made her food way in advance and froze it. So when she died, my grandfather had all of this food already made in the freezer that lasted him for a few months. But the specific meal that she had made was Rosh Hashana dinner, and she died a few days before the holiday (not this year). So she had already cooked the meat, and there wasn’t time to get new meat anyway between the funeral, shiva, the butcher being closed for Saturday, and the holiday starting. So we wound up just eating the meal that she had already made. To this day (actually exactly today, since we had brisket for Rosh Hashana), we refer to that meal as her “memorial brisket”.
My favorite food memory is of the homemade 2-layer birthday cakes that my mother made, and hand-decorated, for us when we were kids.
my favorite food memory is my grandmother making a huge pot of Italian sauce (aka: gravy) for Sunday dinner. She would always allow me to dip the freshest softest sliced bread in that pot. the sauce was so thick and my mouth literally waters at the thought of that first bite! yum!
One of my earliest food memories is bottled home-made root beer, fermenting in the shelves of the wood-working shop in the back yard. We loved root beer, esp with popcorn, and it was so hard to wait for it. It was strong but sweet and full of bubbles, and the most delicious root beer I’ve ever had.
Favorite food recipe… oh my goodness….
Probably making and subsequently devouring the stuffed artichokes that my grandmother lovingly makes.
Hmm, my favorite food memory? I think that would have to be decorating Christmas cookies with my mom when I was a kid. If you knew my family that would be a funny memory. My mom does not cook. She somewhat cooked when we were little out of necessity, but since we were old enough to fend for ourselves, she largely quit cooking. But she liked to bake and we would make sugar cookies and decorate them with different colors of vanilla icing and various sprinkles. It was always a lot of fun even if they didn’t look much like the beautiful sugar cookies people make these days. Thank you so much for the chance to win!
one of my favorite food memories is the holidays at my grandmas house… specifically christmas eve dinner when my family would cook several fish dishes…. i remember going with my grandma to arthur ave in the bronx to buy everything on christmas eve morning… then spending all day preparing dinner for the whole family… it is still one of my favorite meals to prepare..
Favorite food memory? That’s a tough one! I’ll go with this:
The first summer my mom and I made jam is such a wonderful memory for me. We used the plums that grew in our yard – my brothers helped pick the fruit, but after that it was just me and my darling mumsey. She is gone now but every batch of jam that I make reminds me of her…
One of my favorite food memories is canning with my mom and my sister. I love it. They live in Nebraska so the produce is garden-fresh.
My grandmother’s Homemade Chicken Noodle soup. I helped make the Homemade noodles!
One of my favorite food memories is my Hungarian great grandmother coming to visit. She would make all our favorite Hungarian pastries that we didn’t get very often. Now I am trying to record all the recipes to pass down to my daughter and niece so they aren’t lost. Thanks for the giveaway!
Making apple dumplings with my grandmother.
My favorite food memory is of my Papa (grandfather). Each year at Christmas we would have a huge family gathering at his and Mama’s house. It lasted all day. And it would start with opening stockings and eating a HUGE southern-style breakfast. Mama did all the food except for one thing: The grits. Papa would get out a 10 quart stock pot and pounds of butter and cornmeal. He cooked it for what seemed like hours. And it is the gold standard for all other grits that I have ever eaten. It has to be buttery yellow, smooth and creamy and not remind me of dried grain in any way, shape or form.
Favorite food memory??? Wow, my life is filled with them but the ones I probably look back on the fondest would be shopping at the outdoor markets in Germany when I was a child. I loved the sights, sounds, and smells but to a child the best part was probably all the “treats” given out by the vendors.
Mixing dough in the stand mixer with grandma, playing “this is snow!” with the sugar and “dust storm” with the cocoa….you get the idea!
My Favorite food memory is learning to can with my grandmother. We make apricot jam and at the end of it all we sat together and ate biscuits with jam on top. It was so good! Ever since them we still make time to get together every year to pick and can apricots and treat ourselves afterwards.
While I couldn’t necessarily pick out my absolute favorite food memory (so many to choose from!), I suppose my most nostalgic one is from when I was a kid and my siblings and I would go out to the garden patch where my family had red raspberry canes. We would go through the rows and pick only the ripest, most sun-warmed berries and gorge ourselves until our mouths were stained red. Even our dog would join us, peeling back his lips like he was going to growl and then using only his teeth to pluck off a juicy berry.
On our honeymoon, my husband and I went to a small olive oil shop in Grenada, Spain for a 13 course meal featuring different types of olive oil. It was several hours long including amazing food, plenty of wine, and the most amazing conversations. We will still talk about that meal to this day and it has never been topped.
There are lots of food memories but a nice recent one for me was taking my kids to a sushi bar and having want some of everything including my favorite – broiled eel nigiri. I love that they are such omnivores.
My favorite food memory is watching my mother making the dough for apple strudel when we lived in Austria. It was always my favorite dessert.
My mother was born and raised in Berlin. This has her name written all over it. Thanks for letting me know about Luissa. I will be adding her to my blog reading!!
My earliest food memory probably dates back to when I was 3-4 years old. After spending the night at my grandparents’ , my grandpa and I would wake earlier than the rest of the house, go into the kitchen and make toasted cinnamon bread. The smell of cinnamon still brings me back to that happy memory. The weird thing is that my second food memory is toasting English muffins with my other grandparents. It’s no wonder that I love all toasted things.
Mine is thanksgiving spent with my grandma daisy as a child