Sunday, September 4, 2011

Well, it smelled good anyway



We have several plum trees in our backyard. We hate the trees because they have prickly branches and we have scraped hands, arms and legs when dealing with them.  But the best grass in our yard is under these tree......?
 Usually we only see the plums on the ground after they are over ripe and bees are busy feeding on them.
This year I wanted to finish something on my to-do list. I was going to bake with the fruit in our yard.  I could reach a few branches by standing, then I went and got the golf cart and stood on the  seat, stretching to reach ones higher.  They were a nice reddish-purple color and they smelled really good.  I searched on line for recipes using plums from trees in Minnesota. I found one that looked promising.






It took quite awhile to chop all the plums as they are quite small. I tried to peel a couple, but it took so much flesh with. I was hoping if I cut the pieces small, they would disintegrate while baking in the oven.  I was concerned with the amount of sugar in the recipe-1/2 cup sugar and 3/4 cup of corn syrup.  I followed the directions and it smelled so good in the kitchen.








I eagerly waited for Dude to come home and have some. Yep-not a good experiment. The peels didn't disintegrate and the cobbler was waaaaaaay too tart. With all that sugar?  But I crossed part of my baking with fruit from the yard. As we speak (or as I write this) I have about 6 pounds of apples off our tree stewing to make home made apple pie filling I can throw in the freezer and make Dude a pie in the middle of winter-and it will taste like summer.  So I add this to the fail category, but nothing ventured, nothing gain.  On to the next challenge.