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.
What I think has become one of my most favorite food memories, is having an over-abundance of heirloom tomatoes from my own garden, searching the internet for what to do with them, stumbling across the Yellow Tomato with Smoked Paprika Jam recipe and canning for the first time in my life. That has been one of the most tastiest condiments I have ever tasted and every time I walk past my jars in the kitchen, I look at the beautiful jewel toned color with a sense of pride and accomplishment. I think that recipe alone has started a canning addiction I’m not quite sure will ever stop! I’ve been looking at every bit of fruit and vegetable since then and wondering what recipe I can use to can those too! Apple butter here I come…
Lemon Bars! They are my favorite and my dad’s! I make them for him every year.
My favorite food memory is from the summer of 1976 when I sat in the dark of night with a friend eating a mango. We both had juices dripping down our faces and all the senses we had available were taste and touch and sound. The taste was fabulous.
Oh, so many! But the first one that came to mind was learning to make bread from a neighbor, then having fresh, warm bread with butter she had churned and honey her bees had made. Nothing will ever be quite so wonderful.
My yiayia made a squash pita that is, to this day, the most delicious and comforting dessert I’ve ever eaten. Go into a Greek restaurant and ask for kolokithopita and they’ll laugh, shake their heads, and say that no one makes it any more. But they should.
I remember my grandma making ham and bean soup. yum!
I don’t have one favorite, but a thing that has always been a joke in our family is that I love Thanksgiving dinner so much that I hurried out just in time. I was born on Thanksgiving day at 11:47 am and even the years when my birthday wasn’t on Thanksgiving I always wanted that meal. And the year we celebrated Thanksgiving early and spent the actual holiday in the rain roofing a garage I was a seriously upset girl. I remember we had pizza for lunch and lasagna for dinner and I’ve yet to forgive my mother for a Thanksgiving full of Italian food (which I normally love). And I still adore our traditional Thanksgiving feast!
In high school I attempted my dad’s favorite pie- lemon meringue. I buttered up with pie dish too thickly and the whole crust came sliding down during baking and I was unable to salvage it.
My favorite food memory would be when I discovered that I could make amazing cranberry sauce that did not come out of a can!
My favorite food related memory is fishing and gardening with my dad. He was so passionate about both. I wish he were alive now so I could enjoy both with him. He passed just when I really started getting into food, preserving, etc. I’ll bet he watches me from above and smiles 😉
Favorite food memory….that’s a tough one. I’m having fond memories of my grandmother’s macaroni salad, and fond memories of fresh-baked bread and fresh jam. Yum.
The holidays with my mom cooking – to this day she insists on doing it all herself, and the menu never changes, but there’s something very comforting in the preidictableness of it all.
My favorite food memory is making fudge at Christmas with my family as a young child.
Our small but mighty Italian family has a fantastic meat sauce recipe. I guess it’s what the rest of the world would call Italian Gravy. You simmer meatballs, sausage, and thin sliced pork chops all day in a seasoned tomato sauce. It’s amazing! My best memory of this sauce would be about ten years ago when I finally had the good sense to watch my mom make the sauce and write it all down. It’s a memory that I’ll forever treasure, writing and talking with my mom as she shared our family’s favorite meal. Now, I have a real recipe to pass down to the next generation. On a personal note, I made this sauce for my fiance on our second date, I guess it somewhat proves that the way to a man’s heart really could be through his stomach.
making blackberry jelly which my husband loves
Tastingeach kind of apple at the orchards, first with my mother, and later with my son, tochoose the best ones to brin g home.
My favorite food/cooking memory was the first time I followed a cookbook recipe (Fanny Farmer Cookbook) for pot roast. I was determined to make an adult dinner for my college friends and it took me an entire afternoon because I did a “dry run” first. I’m still hearing from friends who remember that dinner – linen tablecloth, candles, wine, matching china and silverware – salt AND pepper shakers, and the most incredible apple pie (also from Fanny). It did something to my self esteem as “a woman” – you see this was back in the mid-60’s and we were still going to college to get our “MRS” degrees. I lived in a small dorm and three married before graduation and one the day after graduation and four within a couple of years after that. And they all got a Fanny Farmer Cookbook from me at their showers!
My favorite food memory is making peanut butter cookies with my grandma. I always marveled at the way the fork would make those perfect ridges. 🙂
My favorite food memory is of my grandmother going into the kitchen and telling her cooks what to do with the dishes. She would stand behind the stove and taste the dishes while telling the cook to add more of this or chop half of that. Although she had maids (she lived in the Philippines) to do the chopping and cleaning, she was the one who told them what to do and how to do it. And of course the she was the first taster!
my favorite memory is baking bread with my mom when I was little. I had my own kid sized pans for my breads. my mom said it was necessary because I had weird flavor combinations (i remember christmas cookie sprinkles in one…), but I loved standing at the counter with her mixing and kneading the bread.
my favorite memory is making banana bread with my gramma
Since I usually just cook for myself some of the “bigger” meats (whole turkey) were a bit of a mystery. One Thanksgiving a group of friends organized a potluck, with the main course prepared in the church basement where we were celebrating the meal. There were enough of us that two whole turkeys were needed. I was reading the instructions on how to cook the turkey thoughtfully provided on the plastic turkey bag. Giblets bag? Couldn’t find it. I looked and looked. Asked my friend Greg, the other turkey chef. He said, ‘Oh, don’t worry about it, I didn’t find one either’. Proceeded to try to get the plastic leg binding thingy loose. It was an epic struggle and by the time I got it disengaged the turkey had been roughed up enough that the plastic bag of giblets fell out of …. the neck cavity? Who knew there was one? Greg had gotten his bird into the oven before I did. ‘The neck, they’re in the neck!!!’. Fortunately the plastic hadn’t melted yet and we retrieved them. If you need to hide something in a turkey, I know where….
My favorite food memory is my mom’s canned fruits and vegetables. We kept them in our basement (which was made of fieldstone and was pretty creepy to a young kid), in the old coal room (even creepier because it had black walls from the coal). In order to eat the wonderful pickles, tomatoes, pears, and currant, strawberry and other jellies and jams, I had to get up the nerve to go into the basement and into the coal room to get them. It was always worth it.
There are so many fond food memories. The best, however, is probably Grandma’s Chicken Noodle Soup, which myself and my siblings loved beyond reason. I once asked for the secret and found out she spiked it with extra chicken bouillon to enhance the flavor, but I think the real secret was the heap of parmesan cheese we ladled into it! Now that we are vegetarian she doesn’t make it for us any more, but I sort of wish she would.
The runner up is making fudge. My great-Aunt Tubba (as a baby one of the cousins couldn’t pronounce “Ann” and ended up with Tubba — no lie) used to make fudge for every major family vacation. When she died I was 12 and my mother decided that I could carry forth the tradition, helping me make it for christmas boxes. When I moved to college, I decided to carry it on even when it required borrowing kitchens from friends while living in the dorms. The only thing I’ve changed is to take the walnuts out, which everyone has thanked me for!
My favorite food memory? My grandmother’s pot roast dinners, followed by her signature layer cake. Sheer heaven, and one that’s been missing from my life since 1985.
Sitting at the table with my Grandparents pitting cherries. Their banter back and forth was always hilarious!
In my family, the expression “just like Grandma used to make” is usually a cause to run the other way. One grandmother kept her cookie jar full of Fig Newtons and iced oatmeal cookies. I don’t know if she ever baked. At least she knew her limitations.
On the other hand, my other grandmother was a big fan of TV dinners and instant foods (cup a soup was a big deal, as were canned potato pancakes- just slice and fry!). She couldn’t understand why, when making up a box of mac & cheese, nobody would eat it after she sprinkled the dry cheese powder onto the plain, cooked macaroni.
So, most of my favorite food memories revolve around the humor of some cooking disasters, like the time my mom decided to pick the gorgeous purple grapes from the arbor in our yard, but produced a green grape jelly. She had peeled all of the grapes. Or, the now famous Thanksgiving when the turkey cooked all night at 450 degrees, resulting in a pan full of fat and drippings, and a dried out turkey carcass (it turned out that the temperature regulator on the oven was broken). And, my grandmother’s sweet potato pie recipe? Take a pie shell (frozen, of course), open a can of sweet potatoes, mash them up, add a dash of cinnamon and stuff it into the pie shell. Bake it until it’s burnt around the edges. When I made a sweet potato pie a few years later (which was delicious, by the way), my brother, having been traumatized by tasting my gramma’s version, refused to try it at first.
And so, we like to sit around the holiday table, after eating a delicious dinner (gramma is not allowed to cook, and mom sticks with what she knows), and laugh over the memories of culinary nightmares in the family history. And those laughs, shared by the entire family, are some of the best food memories ever.
My favorite food memory is making Stromboli with my Dad.
My favorite food memory is making my first cake with my dad – I realize how he really is the person who showed me how much fun baking is!
Favorite food memory is probably playing swords with dried spaghetti as my mom would cook dinner in the evening. A close second is the first time I made jam (for my (now) husband’s birthday) and my roommate and I sat in the family room waiting to hear the jars “pop.” We’d do a little happy dance each time we heard one!
My favorite food memory is canning apricot jam with my mom when I was a kid. It set me up for all the canning I do now.
My favorite food memory is taking Home Ec (remember that class in junior high?) and already knowing how to cook the simple recipes they were teaching. Way to go Mom … you really were teaching me without either of us realizing it.
This recipe sounds so easy and delicious! I love the deep purple!
My favorite food memory was way back when I was about 4, I carved out a giant pumpkin (that I just about fit inside at the time) with my grandma and then we roasted the seeds and baked some pie pumpkins and winter squash that we made into a puree and used to layer over slices of apples and pears for the most amazing pies. I still make the pie ever year for Thanksgiving and add some maple syrup and toasted pecans to the top!
I think my favorite memory involves preparing peach cobbler with my Grandmother. (Using her canned peaches of course!) She never wrote down any of her recipes and I wanted to have them to make after she was gone. They way she taught me was by having me make it with her and her saying, add enough (insert food item) so it feels like this when you stir it. Cook it long enough so it looks like this, and so on. Although I would prefer to cook with a recipe, I have been able to re-create that peach cobbler by stirring it and cooking it just so.
My favorite memory is “helping” my mother while she canned green beans. She always canned everything we grew and whatever anyone would give her. She was fast at getting the beans in the jars and keeping everything hot. When I was learning, I was slow, so she would let me help a little then finish herself so the beans and jars stayed hot. Now I cherish those memories and wish I had paid more attention to all the other vegetables and fruits she canned!
My favorite food memory happened just last week- cooked for my parents, who are picky eaters and have never acknowledged my (growing) skills, and they finally complimented my meal with genuine enthusiasm. So nice to treat them after years of eating their food.
My Italian Grandmother’s rabbit stew, so rich and wonderful!
Tia, I would love you forever if you could share your grandmothers rabbit stew recipe. I have yet to find one that isn’t too sweet, too bland and makes me sad i wasted a rabbit on it.
My favorite food memory is my grandmother’s blueberry cake. When I make it my house smells like hers and I feel like I am seven years old in Maine all over again.
My favorite food memories are learning to cook with my Dad.
My favorite food memory is spending summers when I was 3-4 years old with my “Mommom” in her skinny city row home. I would spend hours helping her make crunchy, buttery chicken cutlets and hand rolled pierogies.
A 17 year-old Palestine and Polish boy with carmel skin and blue eyes…
A pottery studio…
And my 16 year-old southern country girl self presented with Turkish Delight as a declaration of his love.
He clearly didn’t know that a southern girl from Redneck-ville USA would have no idea what a treat this gooey-sugary delicacy is and I wasn’t about to tell him. I fell in love with food that day, probably more so than with him and began learning what a big place my the world is through my palate.
I’ve enjoyed many food memories since then but the first taste of something beyond my comfort zone is still my favorite.
My favorite food memory: The dish wasn’t really anything special, it was just the first time I followed a recipe all on my own and came out with a result that actually kinda looked like the picture in the book. Victory!
I grew up in Germany and my mother was an expert Pflaumenmuss maker though she did it on the stove top. My favorite use for Pflaumenmuss to this day is Rohrnudeln, a wonderful yeasted roll fill with Pflaumenmuss and baked in the oven and served warm with vanilla sauce. Heaven on a plate and certainly one of my fondest food memories. My mother would occasionally make this dish for dinner with a green salad on the side for good measure!
I remember being in the kitchen with my mother and grandmother as a very young child – maybe 3. They were chatting and making cream of wheat for me. I looked up and saw the cream of wheat box and now every time I see that box it takes me back to that moment and I feel safe and content.
Canning with my mom and grandma as a child.
My favorite food memory is watching my grandfather slice corned beef for St. Patrick’s Day dinner. He made the best corned beef and I got to steal the loose pieces!
A lovely plum cake my German grandmother made. She’s been gone for many years, but I still make the cake every plum season.
Honestly, I think my favourite food memory is the first time I had dinner at my now-husband’s place. He’d promised to cook me dinner, and I was expecting something a la Rice-a-Roni, like every other boyfriend I’d had. Instead, he cooked a four course feast, all the recipes were from the Caribbean (May 2005) issue of Bon Appetit. I knew right then that he was the one for me.
My favorite food memory is of my whole family making tons and tons of cookies for christmas. We’d give plates away to teachers, the bus driver, dad’s barber, the mail man, and neighbors.
I grow up in the 50’s on a farm in Nebraska and as soon as school was out, we began canning, preserving, freezing. My favorite smell was that of the dill blossom and stuffing cucumbers into huge jars. And then there were times when my mom found a choke cherry tree and so there was jelly. And wild strawberries along the back roads. And chickens to butcher and put up in the freezer. The best day of the year was when our Saturday dinner came from our garden and the chicken coop. Good times.