Recipes  

4 Ways to Use Excess Plums

Plum season is on until October! If you’ve loaded up on this purple fruit to make jam, a crumble or even a sauce to go with meat, you likely still have a few plums left over. To keep them from going to waste, here are a few ways to use your surplus.

1. Dried in the oven

Whether black or red, dried plums make for a delicious snack or edible cake decoration. Rabbit also pairs very well with dried plums. If they soften after a while, you can put them back in the oven for a few minutes so they can dry out again.

2. Fruit candy

Extract the juice from the plums and combine it with gelatin. Bring to a boil, add sugar and pour the mixture into a mould. The next day, cut the jelly into squares. They make for a great treat at the end of a meal, or you can add them to a fruit salad with lemon jelly!

Did you know?

• While food waste concerns all types of food, fruits account for 15% of all food waste in Canadian households.

 

• 1,225,000 apples and 555,000 bananas are wasted every day in Canada.

3. Plum confit

In a  baking dish, combine plums with sugar, water and a bit of butter. Bake for 20 minutes and then let cool at room temperature. This confit tastes great served on crepes, French toast or vanilla ice cream.

4. Drinks

Combine them with alcohol (spirit) to make a mistelle (a fortified wine) or simply plum juice, by bringing the cut and pitted fruit, sugar and water to a boil. Let cool, blend, strain through a sieve and enjoy!

Preventing waste is imperative and with these ideas – which apply to all stone fruits – your options to help reduce your ecological footprint have gone up! It’s always best to give your food a second life. If that isn’t possible and the fruit isn’t fit to be consumed, it’s better to compost it rather than trash it.