Plum Variations

My daughter always says she loves plum pies; we have only made them once - last summer. I guess they made a good impression.

As I haven't had time to go to the market lately, I had asked my husband to keep a look out for Italian Plums. So last weekend he came in with a whole bag full - 4 pints!

My daughter and I set to plum pie making. I decided I would do one big one for a party we were having, and four little ones mixed with other fruits.

I did enough crusts for two pies. And for the plum pie, I followed the recipe from the trust Farm Journal's Complete Pie Cookbook - you can read it in a previous post (scroll down for Plum Spice Pie)

Then I made four little pies. As I have written in the past, I like doing these mini pies because I feel more flexibility to experiment.

The large plum pie was a huge hit. The whole thing was eaten at the party. We served the four little ones for a smaller dinner the second night. The variations included:

Red & Purple Plum with Ginger Lime - I added about 1/2 t of ginger a t of lime plus sugar to a mix of purple and red plums.

Cherry Plum - I added a distribution of about 1/4 cherries to plums with organic sugar and nutmeg with the spicy crust.

Plum Apple - I added about a half an apple to the plums and cinnamon and added the spicy crust.

Cherry Apple - I added the other half of the apple to about 1/4 c. of cherries with a 1/4 t of Almond extract and a squirt of lemon.

After we tried all of them, the lime plum was the only failure. The Cherry Apple and Plum Apple were diving though and definitely worth a future big pie.

I used that souther lily white flour because that is all I had. I kind of didn't want to because I think it is over processed. But, truth be told it made a better crust. I was able to mix it without getting tough and it took the water really well.