Sand Plum Jelly Recipe

If you live in rural KS/OK- then you have probably heard of sand plums.  If you are lucky, you might even have a sand plum tree in your yard, or you might be close to someone who does that might let you pick them.  I didn’t have either of those lol.  And sand plum jelly was probably my most requested jelly last year.  People have asked since I started going to farmer’s market if I had sand plum jelly. Had I heard of sand plum jelly? Oh, yes.  Had I ever tried it before?  Nope.  Sorry!  I had no access to sand plums, and had no desire to go out looking for them.

Then, last summer, Nate’s stepdad told me that he had picked a few bags and thrown them in the freezer, and could I make him some jelly?  Of course I could!  I kept meaning to, but then life got in the way/divorce/fair time/I’m pretty forgetful and wouldn’t think about it very often.  Now here we are about oh, nine months later, and DeWayne FINALLY has his jelly!

I started looking for recipes every once and a while, but didn’t want to just pick a random recipe that I didn’t know would work or not.  Especially since I only had two bags of plums, and they weren’t even mine.  I wanted to find one from a blog that gave some tips and told me HOW to make it.  But I never found it.  I read some different recipes, and techniques for getting the juice from the plums, and it looked pretty easy.

So I asked him to send the plums down a few weeks ago.   He sent two quart bags of frozen plums.  It made ALOT of juice.  Which was fine by me!  He just wanted a few  big jars for himself, and said that I could sell the rest at farmer’s market.

People were HAPPY about that lol!  I already sold out of the first round of two batches– it makes 10 half pint jars per batch.  It sets up beautifully and is a gorgeous color.  I used both bags to make two pots of juice, and then I used one pot to make the first two batches.  I froze the other pot’s worth of juice, and actually made those two batches last night.   That’s 40 jars of jelly from those two quart bags of plums.  Score!  My customers are just loving it!  So now I am on the lookout for more sand plums! I have a lead though…so hopefully that pans out :-).

 

Oh, and if you are just a little bit short on your juice, you can fill it the rest of the way with water.  I would say I had 4 Cups of juice, then I would add 1 1/2 Cups of water.  Worked just fine!

So, if you are like me and were hoping to find a reliable sand plum jelly recipe, look no further! I don’t see why you couldn’t use this recipe for other small plums, too.   This recipe came from HERE.

Oklahoma Sand Plum Jelly
Printer version of this recipe

Ingredients:
5 1/2 c Plum juice
7 1/2 c Sugar
1 Box fruit pectin

Instructions:

To prepare plum juice:

Wash plums, cover with cold water and boil until plums are soft and skins pop. Press through jelly bag (cheese cloth) strain and measure.

To prepare jelly:

Mix plum juice with pectin and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Add sugar, continue stirring and boil hard for one minute.

Pour in sterile jars. Let set for one minute and skim top. Seal with new lids.

Let jelly cool slowly to prevent jars from exploding.

Yields approximately 6 pints.

From: Ellen Rains Harris
To: Anglican@stsams.org
Subject: Re: Emmaus or the NOFA Conference
Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004

 

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