It’s definitely time to get started on my homemade Christmas gifts for the year. Up first is this plum butter!
When I told my mother I was making plum butter she just kept saying “Ew!” over and over again. I’m not sure why. Plums are delicious, so plums cooked down into a spread? Delicious! And seriously so, so easy. This is one of those recipes that just cooks while you’re going about your life. I cooked the plums while I slept and then made the butter while I was at work for the day. Beautiful. You’ll see that this is a crock pot recipe. It doesn’t have to be. If you’re home and willing to leave the stove on low all day you can easily cook this in a pot on the stove. You’ll see in an upcoming post that I’m using the regular stovetop method for Vanilla-Bourbon Pear Butter and my house currently smells amazing!
I have a love/hate relationship with canning and I think I can blame the “hate” portion on my weak little stovetop. It’s just so pathetic compared to the glory that is a gas stove. With the tiny little jars I use for these fruit butters, it’s fine. But when I try to can larger jars using the water bath method I just can’t bring the water to a boil. I once waited four hours and my water bath never came to a boil! (I don’t want you to think I watched water not boil for four hours. I did lots of other jars waiting for the pot to reach a boil!)
Anyway, I’m really happy with this plum butter. Hopefully you will be too
Crock Pot Plum Butter
- 4 pounds plums
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon allspice
- 1/2 teaspoon cloves
Cut your plums in half to remove the pits. You’ll see in the picture that I didn’t do that at this step and I definitely regret it. (The pits got stuck in my food mill so I ended up having to remove pits from piping hot plums)
Throw your plums in the slow cooker and cook on low until they are just about falling apart.
Puree using the fine disc on your food mill. You’ll get a weird-looking foamy pink sludge.
Add all the other ingredients, stir, and cook on low with the lid propped open.
It’s going to be up to personal preference how long you cook this. I wanted a fairly thick and concentrated butter so I cooked for about 8 hours on low.
To can, I used a water bath for 15 minutes. Pretty simple.
