Plum Compot

This is an easy way to use up plums, and the plums do not have to be perfect – just cut away the bad part. It is really lovely to have as part of breakfast, on your cereal or yoghurt, and you get lots of lovely plummy syrup to drizzle on too!

It keeps well in the fridge for at least a week. It is also really good to freeze down and bring out later in winter, when there is not so much good, fresh fruit available.

You can make it plain, or, for variety, you can add a little warming spices, as suggested.

1 kg plums

200 g castor sugar

400 ml water

Optional: 1 cinnamon stick or 5 whole cloves

Cut the plums in half, and remove the stone. If the plum has been damaged, cut away the bad part and use the part that is still good. By bad I mean a bruised part or where a wasp had a nibble of the plum! Don’t get me wrong - I am happy for them to also be here and do their part for our environment. It is just best to remove that nibbled plum end. Throw the bad part on your compost heap or put it in your food waste, then it still gets used well.

Place the sugar and water (and spice, if using) in a saucepan (with a capacity of about 2 litres for 1 kg of plums). Heat gently to dissolve the sugar, then bring to a (gentle) boil for about 5 minutes. Now add all the plums to the saucepan, start a timer for 10 min., and allow to come back to a gentle boil. If it is too vigorous, turn down the heat a little! Carefully stir the plums once or twice during the cooking, allowing the ones at the bottom to come to the top and vice versa, so they all cook evenly.

After the 10 minutes all the plums should be cooked through, but still holding their shape. It can be good to keep an eye on them for the last few minutes, at least the first few times you cook them, to make sure they are not disintegrating, since that is not the idea! Similarly, if they are not all cooked through after the 10 minutes, give them a few more minutes, watching them carefully. It might simply be that you have very large plums, or that the heat was a little on the low side.

Allow to cool before serving – at a minimum cool it long enough that it is only slightly warm. As I suggested, really good for breakfast, but why not drizzled on top of some vanilla ice cream for a pudding as an alternative?

Note: the recipe is easy to scale for other amounts of plums, see examples below: