Sugar Plums - "the quintessential Christmas sweet"

Towards the end of September of this year, when my neighbour got a lot of special Italian plums, I took to looking-up how to make real "sugar plums” as in the Sugar Plum Fairy and I located on the internet "The Historical Cookery Page" at http://www.godecookery.com/friends/frec74.htm by Sharon Cohen, where she describes how sugar plums historically were made, and I passed the link along to Barb.

Well low and behold she tried the old recipe and, sorry to say I didn't take a picture of them but, I can report that they were absolutely FANTASTIC!

She said they were easy to make, not complicated that is, just time consuming, and at the end I put some in the dehydrator to spead the process along and they turned out wonderfully.

Three important notes:
  • she used the Italian plums
  • you need to be very very carefully follow the instruction or you’ll end up with a pot full of goo instead of sugar plums; when it says turn gently them certainly mean GENTLY, but oh the effort is so worth it,
  • Barb did  use a heavy bottomed enamel pan and said it was great as she did not have to transfer the plums.
We found that ¼ on one at a time suffices they are so rich …

The video of Walt Disney’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8At8zfh_o3E from the up-dated version of Fantasia is all I have to offer visually, but, I highly recommend making the sugar plums next year and saving them for a very special treat indeed for Christmas next.
They are truly stupendous!


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