Plum Jam Spice-Plus Recipe

Food in Jars provides a lot of great recipes for small-batch canning. I often size up because I have a bunch of something. Sometimes I have less than the quantity called for and adjust a recipe down rather than up. That was the case with the Spiced Plum Jam. I had some frozen plums, a few fresh, and a handful or two of honeyberries I threw in to use them up.

Ratios are my friend here. Fruit:sugar 1:1? No problem. Scaling spices down can be tricky if I end up with something like 1/3 teaspoon. I round down and taste since it's easy to add, impossible to take away. I look at how much lemon juice the recipe calls for as a contribution to pectin. 

But wait...

Two source recipes:

• Spiced Plum Jam: Fruit:Sugar 4 lbs:4 cups. 1 lemon juice/zest, which means 2 T. juice. 1-1/2 t. cinnamon and 1/2 t. nutmeg, so 2 t. total spice for this quantity of plums.
• Plum Jam with Cardamom: Fruit:Sugar 5 lbs.:4 cups. 2 T. lemon juice, 1 t. cardamom

Higher sugar ratio in recipe #1, higher spice too, and I want to combine these because I love all three spices and they mesh well.

I also have 2.75 pounds of plums plus honeyberries. Some of those plums are a bit on the green side.

Pro tip: If you're going to freeze a bunch of plums with plans for future jam, dice them first. When I defrosted my plums I had plum mush. I ended up using kitchen scissors to cut them into chunks in a bowl. This felt harder than chopping them quickly last fall would have.

Plum Jam Spice-Plus, No Pectin

The "plus" here could be adjusting the spice profile to suit your taste. Spice proportions don't affect the jelling process. It could also represent throwing in something besides plums if, like me, you have a small amount of something to use up.

Plums are relatively high in pectin. Between that and the use of lemon juice, you shouldn't need pectin to get a set.

• Plums (plus): 2.75-3 pounds of pitted plums, sliced into thin half moons or chopped
• Sugar: 2.75 pounds
• Lemon juice: 2 T.
• Cinnamon: 1 t.
• Cardamom: 1/2 t.
• Nutmeg: 1/4 t.
• Cloves: Dash

Mix plums and sugar in a nonreactive bowl or post and let them sit for an hour or more to macerate. You could do this the night before if you remember. I didn't. It's fine. Honestly, if you forgot completely just start. 

Stir the spices together in a small dish, then sprinkle a bit and stir into the plums, sprinkle and stir, sprinkle and stir, until you've blended in all the spices. This extra step gives you more even distribution of the flavors. 

Alternatively, you can mix the spices into the sugar and add them all together.

Add the lemon juice. 

Cooking: Bring the ingredients to a boil over high heat, stirring. Lower to medium-high heat and cook at a low boil for 30-35 minutes, until the plums soften and the syrup thickens. When you hold the spoon up on its side, the syrup will run down in slow drips that run together rather than liquidy waterlike drops.

Canning set-up: Prep your canning jars and equipment. When you're ready to start cooking it's a good time to put a baking pan of jars into the oven at 200 degrees and get the big canning pot of water started heating up.

Fill and process: Using a funnel, fill jars, leaving 1/2-inch headspace. Wipe the rims with a damp paper towel. Dip the lids in the boiling water to sterilize, then put them on the jars and tighten to fingertip tight (which means not screwed super tight because air needs to be able to escape). 

Process 15 minutes, starting the timer once the water comes back to a full boil after you lower the jars into the water. 

For full details on canning how-to, go to the National Center for Home Food Preservation.

Yield: 3 half-pints, 3 quarter-pints

Related reading and recipes

• Heating It Up: Hot Pepper Jelly and Blackberry Chocolate Chili Jam
• Green Tomato Caponata Recipe
• Cherry Cherry Good: Pickled Cherries and Chocolate Cherry Jam
• Apple Mint Jelly, No Pectin Needed
• Mixed Citrus Ginger Marmalade Take 2
• Spiced Apple Butter Recipe 
• Green Tomato Chutney Not-a-Ketchup Sauce
• In Which I Say Never Again to Making Ketchup 
• When Life Hands You a Defrosted Freezer, Make Jam
• My Circular Economy of Apples 
• Making Taybarb: Tayberry Rhubarb Jam Recipe
• Canstravaganza! Food Preservation 2024
• Blackberry Apple Chutney Recipe 
• Green Tomatoes. So Many Green Tomatoes.
• Apples, Apples, Apples!
• Zucchini Tomato Salsa (Everyone Needs Salsa, or, What to Do with a Really Giant Zucchini)
• Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes!
• Pears, Pears, Pears! 
• Future Marmalade 
• Vegan Cranberry Caramelized Red Onion Orange Chutney Recipe Experimentation 
• "Sweet Harvest" 
• All my posts about food, gardening, and the environment