Spiced Plum Sauce

Yesterday we came home from the market with all kinds of goodies and ended up with several different kinds of plums (red and purple, green gages, Damson).  Of course when buying organic fruit it doesn't last long, so I had to jump into more jam making early this morning. 

It is funny how I never intend to do anything in particular, the fruit is on hand and then thoughts form in my head - this is the right combination or this fruit will taste great with these spices. Today it was exactly like that - I had all of these juicy overripe plums, and could smell something spicy going with them.

It did start out as a jam, and I did add apple to the mixture still trying to make every effort to get these concoctions to thicken, however I ended up with a spiced plum sauce, which tastes delicious. My efforts do seem to pay off, when I just go with it! LOL

I chopped up about 5 cups of plums and added 2 small apples, plus the juice of 1 lemon (because it always seems like the right thing to do?) and 1/2 cup of apple concentrate. The plums immediately dissolved into mostly water and I had to let the mixture bubble away for a lot longer then usual.

Plums and apple mixture

Half way through the cooking I added 1/2 teaspoon full of cinnamon and then a sachet bag of whole cloves. For the life of me I could not see myself fishing them out at the end - so I placed a large tablespoon of cloves inside a piece of muslin cloth tied it up and threw it into the plum jam. 

Sachet of Cloves

It smelled great! Very spicy stuff in the end - and will be nice to complement other dishes. I had some on toast and my mouth is still slightly tinged with the taste of it. I could see this being used as a sauce over egg fried jasmine rice and fish...Yumm! 

Then I was back to our feast weekend - where everyone gets to choose their favourite meals and French toast appeared to have won for the lunch time treat. I don't normally do anything fancy when I make this, just duck eggs, cinnamon, nutmeg, goat's milk for the mixture, soak spelt bread (it was cinnamon date bread) and cook this over a hot pan.

Soaking the bread....

Today I served the hot French toast with my homemade apple sauce, goat's butter and maple syrup. Needless to say, there wasn't anything left over! It was yummy and the kids got their treat. This is such an easy meal to make (once in a while) which everyone loves. 

Nearly done....! 

Last night I also made a big batch of Coconut Date balls to have on hand as snacks for the weekend, because I am not buying anything ready made from a shop of any kind (no more date bars etc) - not when we can make our own. These are little energy bars and taste great with chopped figs, dates, tahini, jam, ground nuts all rolled in coconut - lets see how long they last!

Coconut Date Balls with dandelion coffee...

Well, off to sort out the herb garden, enjoy your long weekend,

April