I love plums! Not only do we eat these delicious fruits straight from the tree, but we also preserve these purple gems. And should you take a walk through my cold room, you’d find plum preserves with honey and spice!

Once you have several jars of plum preserves sitting on your pantry self, you have a new staple for your kitchen!

When heated, these spiced plums make a delicious old fashioned sauce for morning porridge, pancakes, waffles or biscuits. Use it as a topping for rustic cakes, to pour over steamed puddings. Plum preserves make a delicious topping for ice cream and yogurt.

You can even use it to make my husband’s favorite Barbecue Plum Sauce. Slather your red meats in the rich flavor!

How to Make Plum Preserves

You’ll need:

• 15-16 lbs of purple Italian plums (enough to fill 7 quart jars)
• 8 C water
• 3/4-1 C honey
• 8-10 cloves
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon or 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions: take out a large pot. Add to it water, honey, cloves, cinnamon and vanilla. Bring to boil and then simmer for 10 minutes.

Pit your plums. While you can halve them to get at the seed, I prefer to pit them whole. It’s faster!

Tightly pack your plums into jars. After being processed in the canner fruits will soften and squish together even more.

Leave 1 inch of head space between your plums and the rim of the jar’s mouth.

When packing is complete, strain cloves and the cinnamon stick from your syrup. Funnel syrup into each jar, leaving 1 inch of head space.

Wipe rims with a damp paper towel and place hot canning lids down, sealing with metal band.

Process according to altitude and let cool for 24 hrs before removing metal bands and checking for a seal.

When done, move to a pantry or kitchen cupboard for ease of use.

At just over 2,000 ft in elevation, I had to process pints for 25 minutes and quarts for 30.