Dash for Damsons

I allowed myself to be so distracted with the courgette glut that I almost missed the damson harvest.  Our two damson trees, like all plums this year, have produced loads of fruits and they are at their peak now with a few just a little too ripe.

Anyway, i gathered as much as I thought I could process only to find that I had run out of jam jars, disaster!  So what to do with all the fruit gathered, well there's always damson gin and I did have a couple of large jars available and the required sugar and gin, so that solved the problem for about 1kg of the crop...

ready for shaking

Now what to do with the remaining 4kg?  Fortunately I have recently purchased a second freezer so I bagged up the damsons in 500g lots and into the freezer they went.


ready for freezing

I'm now sending begging emails to friends for jam jars and on receipt of these I'll be retrieving the damsons from their arctic conditions and turning them into jams and cheeses...and perhaps another batch of damson gin?

Easy, Peasy Damson Gin
Take 450g of damsons, prick with cocktail stick, and pop into a clean sterilised jar.  Cover with 225g sugar and then pour in 600ml of gin.  Seal the jar and shake vigorously.  Store in a cool dark place and shake every day for about 8 weeks.  Taste a couple of times during this period and add more sugar if required.  After about 10 weeks strain and bottle.

Note: Try to keep the gin as long as you can; it will definately improve with age, so make some this year for Christmas 2012.