Mulled Plum Syrup

Fruit syrup is a great way to utilise ripening fruit. I can’t imagine myself supping on a plum juice but I could with a mulled wine in hand, come winter.

So I’ve turned my thoughts into making a mulled plum syrup to add to red wine, making my winter evenings complete.

I’ve had delicious fun finding ways to use fresh plums but now I turn my serious head on to preserving them in quantity!

Making Fruit Syrups

In the syrup making process the general goal is to soften the fruit to produce an unsweetened pure liquid. The sugar is added later once the pulp is discarded. It is a concentrate to be preserved and reconstituted with water (or mulled wine) at a later date.

It is messy, it takes time but it’s one heck of a great way to make the most of your plum harvest!

Extracting the Juices

To extract the best possible juices the fruit needs a little ‘massaging’, or in this case softening by way of simmering. Literally I piled a whole bunch of plums into a heavy bottomed pot (or copper had they did in the old days) and simmered it. That is about the crux of it, however there was some prep first!

It doesn’t matter so much that the fruit is bruised or perhaps the skin is a little discoloured.

Chop off anything that doesn’t look healthy and discard, including any patches where ground fall or bird damage may have attracted fruit fly or any other insects. Make sure the fruit is not over-ripe and on its last legs. Skin on, stone in, it all goes in the pot (minus the nasties). Chopping the fruit into smaller chunks helps the softening process happen a little quicker.

Once you have prepared the fruit, weigh it. For plums I added 10-1 parts fruit to water. In this instance I had 3kg of fresh plums, therefore 300mls of water (with converts to 1.25 cups). It doesn’t need much, although other fruit may differ. Bring to the boil then simmer away until the fruit has softened and the juices are extracted (which may be up to an hour).

Strain It

Next is to strain it to leave all the skin, stones and pulp conveniently in a neat bundle. This is best over a period of several hours (at least 2, or better still overnight) using a *muslin cloth suspended over a colander which it turn sits over a large bowl or bucket.  A kitchen sieve will not be big enough and you may get frustrated as it takes ages to drip through.

Ideally you’d hang it from a hook in the kitchen — good luck! I felt it was easier just suspending it in a colander, but each to their own!

Let it drip naturally. If you squeeze the pulp or try to push it through a sieve the juice may go cloudy and also fragments of the fruit solids may kick-start some fermenting later. The juice should be perfectly and vividly clear.

*You can buy muslin (aka cheese cloth) very cheaply at a fabric shop. It cost me around $3.50 a metre and came in a tube shape so you can easily tie off both ends, or if you are feeling creative, sew up one end to create your very own reusable ‘jelly bag’ as it’s often referred to.

What to do with the left over pulp?  It may be a messy (and fun) job to separate the stones from the rest of the pulp but why not! Keep the pulp for a fruit crumble or add it to your next batch of chutney and discard the stones.

Add Sugar & Spice

Remember this isn’t just fresh drinking juice, this is a preserve. Sugar is required not just to sweeten the juice but to help preserve it. Sugar with all its bad press has good qualities too – preserving being one of them, much like salt and meat going back thousands of years. In this case I didn’t just want sweet concentrate, I wanted a mulled syrup I could add to red wine and heat over an open fire.

Once you’ve strained it, weigh the juice. I applied a 4-5 rule (add approx 4 cups of sugar to every 5 cups of juice). Given that traditional jam making is 50% fruit/50% sugar, you can see the same logic however there is a careful balance between unnecessary sugar for our health, and necessary sugar for preserving! Sweeter fruits call for less sugar.

Put sugar and juice in a heavy bottomed saucepan. Add a muslin bag of spices (I made one and filled it with 1 x cinnamon stick, 4 star anise, 8 cloves, 3 fresh bay leaves, thumb of raw ginger). Bring to the boil stirring regularly so the sugar dissolves and doesn’t stick to the bottom, then reduce heat and simmer for five minutes or so. There is no need to simmer much longer as you want a thickened syrup, not jam!  They syrup may not seem to thicken but it will once cooled.

Don’t be alarmed to see a thick white foamy ‘skin’ on the surface. This can be scooped off before bottling.

Bottle It!

Pour into sterilised jars. Keep a little left over so you can experiment with dilution. The syrup will thicken further as it cools.

Getting prepared for winter is much more fun than I imagined, especially after deciding that a mulled plum syrup would hit the spot — with lashing of red wine of course.

Ahh, I am enjoying plum season this summer and do believe I’ll be raising a glass to this crop on a dreary winter’s eve too.

This marks Day#4 on my & Day challenge to use my huge harvest of fresh plums. I’ve frozen a few kg of plums, made a filling Good Morning Plum Smoothie, whipped up a batch of Gluten Free Plum Friands — and now my Mulled Plum Syrup is maturing.

Only 3 days to go? Awww, I LOVE plums, I think I’ll just have to keep going —- if my Nashi Pear tree lets me. Looks like that’s next in line for a bumper harvest.

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