Plums, Plums, Plums

On Saturday night I stayed at an old friend's house about 20 minutes drive away, in a beautiful corner of the Sussex countryside. She has a proper good old fashioned cottage garden, with breathtaking views of fields, hills, and a small pond - no houses, no roads, no people. And, despite both my friend and her partner having full-time, very demanding jobs, they have managed to get a huge harvest from their garden, and found time to use the produce, working hard in the kitchen to find ways of preserving the fruit and veg.

The night I stayed, I was served a bowl of heavenly fruit pie - it had plums and rhubarb and something else which I forget from my friend's garden, and apples from her neighbour's garden. She then casually mentioned plum leather. 'What's that?' I asked. I then got to try some - fantastic! I was a huge fan of Fruit Winders, and had believed that giving up refined sugar meant saying a sad goodbye to them, but apparently not!

On Sunday, Dawn and Minnie came home from a morning of church and visiting, with their grandparents, each clutching a 2lb bag of plums which they had picked from someone's garden (with permission)! This, I thought, was fate saying to me, 'Fine, you admire that cottage garden? You want to be a homesteader? You like plum leather? Here you go, do something with it!' So we ate a couple of the plums, then I got straight into making a plum pie. And a fine plum pie it was too.

Finally, next day, after much internet research and discussion with friends, I managed to make the fruit roll-ups you see above. Here's how I did it:

I took the stones out and stewed down 2lb of plums with about 1/4 cup of water (though less would have done, they were very juicy. After about 20 minutes of stewing, I put them in the blender and pureed. Next I added 1/4 cup of agave nectar (normal sugar will do, but I'm avoiding the refined stuff) until I thought it tasted sweet enough. How much you need depends on the fruit and your taste. Then I lined two baking trays with baking paper and poured in the gloop, spreading it out with a spatula.
It has to dry, rather than cook, and this could be done in any hot place (covered by a muslin or something I should think, because of flies) but as our weather has turned decidedly wintry, I put them in the oven on the lowest setting (about 70 or 80C) for four hours. I then left them to cool and dry more overnight. In the evening they wouldn't come off the paper without water and difficulty, but by the morning they were peeling beautifully, so I cut them into strips, rolled them up, and enjoyed. My daughter loves them too!