Name: Baked plums in cherry sauce
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 25 min
Ingredients: 6 plums (not too ripe); 1 tsp vanilla essence or paste; 2 star anise; 50ml cherry/ mandarin juice; 50ml water; 2 tbsp demerara sugar

Baked plums in cherry sauce

22 Sep 2019

by Dinna

Prep Time

5 minutes

Cook Time

20 minutes

Total Time

25 minutes

Background

I make these vegan baked plums in cherry or mandarin sauce regularly during the winter months because it’s extremely easy, free-from gluten-dairy-nuts-eggs and can be used up in various ways. You can serve it as a dessert with custard or ice-cream at the end of an Autumnal dinner/Sunday lunch. It can be served with porridge, rice-pudding, or used in trifle, crumble and fruit fools, parfaits, cranachan and other kind of dessert pots. I also like to serve it as compote on the side of roast duck or goose at Christmas time, or I whizz it into a jam that I serve as a sauce/dip or use to make sticky spare ribs and chicken wings. So, overall this is a very versatile (and super easy) dish. (Sometimes I add a stick of cinnamon to it too).

Ingredients

6 plums (not too ripe)
1 tsp vanilla essence or paste
2 star anise
50ml cherry/ mandarin juice
50ml water
2 tbsp demerara sugar

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 180C degrees.
Cut the plums in half and remove the pits.
Pour the juice, water and vanilla into a baking dish, then arrange the plum halves (facing upward) in the sauce.
Tuck the star anise between them, then scatter the sugar on top.
Bake in the oven for approx. 20- 30 minutes - depending on how soft you'd like the plums. If you want to serve them as a pudding or compote, they shouldn't be too mushy. If you want to make sauce/marinade/dip from them, they should be quite soft.