Plum Palooza

I'd like to believe that palooza is a word, and that it means: lots of, abundance, festivity. We had a LOT of plums on our hands this week, after Jake had a plum picking party at his parents house last Sunday. I didn't see his bounty until we got home that night and there was a HUGE sack full of plums on the counter, greeting me. The days went on, and Jake suggested I make jam out of them. They seemed to be begging me to do something with them. I waited a few more days just to make sure they were ripe and plump enough to work with, and then I made jam. It really wasn't hard at all.....I used the same pectin packet as I did for strawberry freezer jam. It's the no cook, no fuss method.

I used Ball brand: Instant Fruit Pectin for freezer jam, which calls for 4 cups of fruit, 1 and 1/2 cups sugar, and the pectin. That's it. And a couple jars to fill. I cleaned about 20 plums (I really don't remember how many) cut around the pit, and cut them into chunks. I don't know why I thought I could smash the plums with a potato masher, however, because that clearly did not work as it did for the strawberries. So I threw them in the blender a little at a time, and that worked wonders. Homemade jam in no time. Except that only used 1/5 of the plums, so I made ANOTHER batch later that night with another pectin packet. We have enough jam to last awhile. :)

The next day, on Sunday, I needed to use more plums and decided to make a lovely plum dessert. I searched around and looked at a bunch of recipes online, and this is the one I made:
A mixture of 2 recipes (one from Allrecipes.com and one from Tasty Kitchen- a website by The Pioneer Woman)

Plum Crisp

4 cups sliced plums
1/2 cup blueberries
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbs lemon juice
dash of nutmeg
dash of cinnamon
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup oatmeal
1/3 cup brown sugar
6 tbs diced cold butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix first 6 ingredients together in a bowl. I microwaved the fruit and sugar in the bowl first for about 4 minutes. In a separate bowl, make topping. Combine the dry ingredients, then add diced butter and work in until the dough resembles pea sized crumbs. (Mine never got to that stage...I was just mixing by hand with a fork, and I didn't mix it enough because it was still floury when it came out of the oven. Oops. Better use a hand mixer next time) Pour fruit mixture in a baking dish (I used 9x13) and crumble topping over it. Bake for 35 minutes until golden and bubbly. Serve with whipped cream or ice cream.

Ehh it was pretty good. I liked the blueberry and plum combo, but my topping didn't come out well since the butter didn't get crumbly enough. Next time, next time. Then on Tuesday, our ward was having a neighborhood barbeque and I needed to take a dessert. So what did I make?? You guessed it- something PLUM! This time, I did a simple plum/peach cobbler, and it was delish.

Fresh Fruit Cobbler (from Allrecipes.com...thanks Victor)

2-3 cups chopped fresh plums
2 cups sliced peaches (I used 2 peaches)
1 egg
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup milk
1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 tbs butter, melted

Preheat oven to 350. Grease 9x13 pan. Arrange the fruit in the baking dish (mix peaches and plums together...although you could use any variation of fruit including berries, apples, pears, cherries, etc). In medium bowl, beat egg, sugar and milk. In separate bowl, sift together flour, baking powder and salt. Add to egg mixture, and stir in vanilla and melted butter. Pour the batter mixture over the fruit, covering fruit. Bake 35 minutes until golden and bubbly. Serve warm.

Yum, this was my favorite! If I make it again, I'll probably double the batter since it was barely enough to cover the fruit (and I used more fruit and a bigger pan than the recipe called for). It all got eaten, and I was proud of myself for using up more of our plums. We still have about 20 plums left, to my dismay. Thanks, Clark and Emma for giving us so many reasons to eat fresh fruit! I'm kind of sad that we didn't plant a garden this year to be able to eat fresh veggies from the backyard, but then again I don't have to stress about how to use up 10 zucchinis.