Perfectly Pretty Summer Plum Sorbet

Sometimes plums are sweet and sometimes they can be tart, but most of the plums I get tend to be a little of both. Occasionally they can even be bitter. Like that time I had to dump an entire pan of plum cobbler because some of the plums were so bitter that, even after mixing with sugar and baking with a nice sweet biscuit-y topping... the whole thing was inedible.

Faced with less than perfectly sweet fruits, sorbets are an easy way to control the sweet/tart balance and come out with something delicious in spite of their random ripeness. And I can think of no better way to celebrate the essential flavor of a lovely seasonal fruit than to feature it in a clean, direct, super-intense sorbet. Fresh and refreshing, it's nothing short of cool perfection on a warm summer evening.

Of course, I don't think making a sorbet from those horrid plums I had four years ago could have tamed their bitterness, but I would've realized the fact sooner (and saved a whole lot of effort, ingredients, and disappointment). And of course, tasting it as I went along would have also saved me from all that, but some lessons (cough) are best learned the hard way.

Pretty Plum (Sorta) Sorbet 
Start this a day or even two before you "need" it... and make sure your ice cream maker insert is pre-frozen. Though not traditional in a sorbet, adding milk will give it a creamier texture and increase the yield... which incidentally, is about 2 pints.

Ingredients

1 cup water
1 cup cane sugar
1 pound ripe plums (9-10), pitted and roughly chopped.
1 pinch of sea salt
2 Tbsp lemon juice
1 Tbsp liqueur or spirit of choice (see Notes)
1 cup cold whole milk

Directions

1. Put sugar, water, plums, and salt in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Simmer for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally. All the sugar should be dissolved and the fruit should be soft. Carefully pour into a wide-mouth quart mason jar. Let cool, then cap it and put it in the fridge overnight.
2. Next day, blend the cold plum mixture thoroughly with a stick blender, right in the jar. 
3. Add the lemon juice and liqueur and blend well. Then add the milk and give it another good blending.
4. Turn on your machine and add the plum mixture according to your machine directions. Churn until the texture is where you want it (mine took about 30 minutes, yours may take more or less time).
5. Transfer finished sorbet into freezer containers and store in freezer. Some say it's best to serve sorbets immediately, but I like the texture better the following day, especially if the weather is warm.
   

Notes: Depending on the intensity of your fruit, you may, or may not, taste the tiny bit of booze in the finished sorbet. Use something like vodka or white rum for less intrusion, or try one that has a flavor which is complementary to the fruit(s) you're using. I used Cointreau (orange liqueur) as I thought it would go well with plums (and I was right!). Whether you taste it in the end product or not, don't leave it out! It's there for a reason: it prevents the sorbet from freezing rock hard. And that really is what it looks like when it's finished! Leaving the skins on the plums gives it that amazing color.


My recipe is adapted from the following delicious sources...

• Sweet Plum Sorbet from Joy The Baker 
• Here's a twist on the JTB recipe above: Muscavado Blueberry Plum Sorbet from Simple Bites
• There's a lovely recipe in the Martha Stewart Living Cookbook for Plum Sorbet (page 425). Don't have that book? Here's a similar recipe á la Martha that's online: Plum Sorbet
• Mark Bittman's original big yellow book, "How To Cook Everything" has a bunch of great tips for making sorbets (pages 669-670).

Bonus Link! ('cuz summer ain't over yet, and neither is plum season!)...

• This recipe (spiked with cardamom and kirschwasser) from the folks at The Kitchn sounds like I need to make it next... Plum Sorbet with Lemon Verbena Cream

August Wish List and the Letter "S"...

Sun... Not too much. Just enough warmth to remind me that it's summer, but not so much that it makes me long for it to be over. If not for me, then for all our gorgeous green tomatoes just waiting to turn vibrant vitamin-packed shades of red, orange, and burgundy.

Sea... I want to go to the ocean. La Mer. I want to sit and stare at it, and listen to it, and breathe its air. Maybe I'll take a kite. Maybe I won't. I want to come home at the end of the day with that pleasant tiredness that I get just from spending the day near it.

Stone Fruit... Fresh, ripe, deeply scented. Perfumed, even. Fruit with pits. In season. Eaten out of hand. Baked, broiled, grilled. I want to over-indulge in stone-fruits. Eat them with every meal. Before they're gone for the year.*

These recipes are the stuff some of my summer dreams are made of...

From Pâte de Fruit To Plum Jam

Today I recooked the two big jars full of failed Pâte de Fruit from two weeks ago with half of a split vanilla bean until all the sugar from the outside of the candies dissolved. When it reached temperature I filled pint jars and processed them in the water canner according to directions in the Ball Blue Book Guide.

I ended up with just under two and a helf pints of Plum Vanilla Jam. The vanilla is not super noticeable, but it was only an afterthought after all. The jam is a little on the thick side (due to all that extra time in the cauldrons), but it tastes pretty good, and slathered on a crispy hot piece of buttered toast... you'd never know it was once a botched batch of Pâte de Fruit.

psst... I won't tell if you don't!

• Plum Jam adapted from Plum-Vanilla Preserves recipe, page 308, Williams-Sonoma Holiday Favorites, 2004.
• Remake instructions for "soft spreads without added pectin", page 122, The Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving, 2009.

Dorie's Dimply Plum Cake

Cardamom* should be renamed cardayum. Sadly, I won't get my way. Not officially at least. But in my world, it's cardayum. Of course, that's much too dorky of a name for such an intensely exotic spice. Like cinnamon, it is at once warm, sweet, sharp, and heady. But that's where the similarity ends. Invigorating, but in a drowsy, laid-back sort of way. Kind of like the last few weeks of summer. Maybe that's why I put kd lang's Invincible Summer on the stereo while I made this cake. It has the same feel. Late August. Still summer but almost autumn; days are still hot, but now, mornings are getting chilly. Feeling less like iced coffee and more like hot tea. This plum cake would go with either really, but I think it's leaning more toward the pot of tea. Lately, so am I.

Plum Cake Contenders

Plum cake recipes that should work with "regular" plums as well as Italian prune plums. Many of these call for cinnamon or cardamom in the batter. Uh oh, I think I feel autumn approaching...

• This Open-Face Plum Cake recipe from MSL (September 2007) makes 2 cakes... great for company or a potluck.
  
• Dimply Plum Cake made with brown sugar, from the book Baking: From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan
• Rustic Plum Cake on page 25 of Cook's Illustrated magazine, July/August 2007
• Yeasted Olive-Oil Plum Cake from wildyeastblog.com (fantastic breads)
• Cinnamon Sugar Plum Cake found at sweetbeatblog.com (with photo) and on epicurious.com
  

Pâte de Fail

My beautiful but rapidly ripening Italian prune plums were calling to me. "Use us or lose us!" they pleaded. There was a partial box of prune plums from CostCo and 5 or 6 random homegrown plums that someone gave us. With some difficulty, I pitted all the plums I had (almost 4 lbs.), and made a huge mess in the process. These are definitely not freestone plums (klingon is more like it). Thinking there's got to be an easier way to pit them, I spied my melon-baller* in the dish rack (recently used to core pears with). It worked surprisingly well. I wish I'd thought of it earlier. Less mess.

Italian Prune Plum Crostata

We were having guests for dinner tonight, so this afternoon I made an Italian Prune Plum Crostata. Why this recipe? The usual reasons: looks easy, sounds tasty, and all the ingredients were on hand. I had always wanted to try one of these rustic free-form pies. Today was the day I finally did it. I even dragged out the dreaded food processor. I have a love/hate thing with that machine, but it does make short work of pie crusts. In my dream kitchen there is a special drawer just for the food processor and all it's many mysterious bits and parts. There is also someone to remember how it goes together, what all those parts are for, and who will wash all of it when I'm through... But I digress. You can make this with almost any fruit: plums, peaches, apples, pears, etc. And should you have any of the Crostata left over, it makes for a lovely breakfast the next morning.

Italian Prune Plums

We must be heading toward the autumn side of summer. I can always tell. Fall colors start to appear on certain shrubs and trees, the days get noticeably shorter, and Italian prune plums make their brief appearance at the market. Mom always made a certain plum cake when these little beauties were available. I haven't mastered her recipe yet, but I keep trying. Here are some other tempting recipes that feature these lovely little plums...

• Spiced Italian Prune Plum Crisp from Tastebook
• A lovely Prune Plum Tart from Joy Of Baking
• Start the day with a Plum Coffee Cake also from Joy Of Baking
• A Plum and Fig Flognarde over at The Kitchn
• Check out this Plum Candy at Married With Dinner
• Plum Cake "Tatin" from Ina Garten. Looks like a plum upside-down cake! Mmmm.