My German friend Rosi gave me the recipe for a delicious plum jam which is made in the oven with far less sugar than most jam recipes use and is flavoured with rum and cinnamon.
While you can use any plums in this recipe, blood plums produce a beautiful deep ruby-red colour and I found some in Aldi. Serve the jam with croissants, or plain thick Greek yoghurt. I haven’t tried making it with other fruits, but plan to. I am sure it will work. Next on the list to try is rhubarb and strawberry, fifty fifty.
1½ kg plums, stoned and quartered
500g sugar
1½ cups dark rum
1 stick cinnamon (optional)
Preheat oven to 200°C or 180°C if you have a fan-forced oven. Place all ingredients in a Le Creuset type heavy casserole with lid and stir to combine. Cook for 2 to 2½ hours, stirring every half hour.
Heat jars without lids in microwave on High for 2 minutes. Pour hot jam into the hot jars filling to about 1cm below the top (discard cinnamon stick) and seal with the lids immediately.
Jam keeps for several months, unopened. Once opened keep in the fridge.
Makes about 4 jars
Hi Linda. Do you think the rum is a necessary addition? I’m not a big fan of alcohol in jams and preserves. Otherwise, sounds like an interesting approach. Is the texture and taste different to the more conventional stove top method?
The recipe says you can use vinegar instead of rum, but I haven’t tried that so didn’t put it in the recipe. You can’t really taste the rum. I think the taste and texture is different from the stove top method, but the only way to be sure would be to make it twice, with the same plums and the same amount of sugar. I made some more yesterday, but when I cut the plums open I discovered they weren’t red inside, so the final colour isn’t as good. I think you could cut back on the sugar even a bit more.
Hi Linda,
This looks so tempting.
I’m keen on making some, but reading of replacing rum.with vinegar left .me a bot baffled.
Won’t it turn too tart?
Could we possibly replace rum with anything else?