Cherry Plum Ice Cream

This was thrown together in full-on experimental mode, in an effort to prove that cherry plums are good for more than just jam-making - so no measurements noted, I'm afraid.

* I stewed some cherry plums in the pressure cooker with a piece of cinnamon stick, and then rubbed them through a colander to puree them and remove the stones.

* I sweetened the plum puree until it tasted sweet enough warm.

* I chilled the plum puree thoroughly.

* In a jug I combined 3/4 pint of cold cherry plum puree, a slug of sloe gin, and 1/2 pint of whipping cream, and stirred to combine.

* On tasting, I decided the mixture was not quite sweet enough, so I then added a slug of runny honey and stirred to combine again.

* The resulting salmon-pink mixture went into the icecream maker to churn in the usual way.

Result - a litre tub of Cherry Plum Ice Cream now firming up in the freezer.


The extra leftover plum puree will end up mixed into cold custard to make a Cherry Plum Fool.

Cherry Plum Jam

There is a hedgerow along a cycle path beside a light industrial estate near here that is full of Cherry Plum trees. It's getting on for the right time of year for fruit, so we wandered past there last night on the way home - and found that the fruit was ripe and ready. After a quick trip home for buckets and a stepladder, we picked several kg.

This morning's first job was washing and picking over the fruit, which left us with 6.5kg for jam-making.