Dry Plum and Chocolate Butter

Mixing plum or plum butter with chocolate creates a wonderful combination. Addingorange flavor rounds up the flavor. Commercial chocolates are often made with plums, cherries or oranges, and such combination work well with butters as well.

• Dry, pitted plums (prunes) 500 g (17.6 oz)
• Semi-sweet chocolate baking chips, 60% cacao, 340 g (12 oz)
• Water, 750 ml (3 cups)
• Cinnamon, ½ g (¼ tsp)
• 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon pure McCormick orange extract
• Lemon zest (1 lemon)
• Orange zest (1 orange)
• 1/2 pint glass jars

Dry plum and chocolate butter.

1. Soak dry plums for 6-12 hours in water. They will absorb water and expand in volume.

2. Blend soaked plums in food processor.

3. Add cinnamon, lemon juice, lemon zest, orange zest and cook with plum pulp on low heat stirring often. After 30 minutes test for doneness:

• place a small quantity of the butter on a plate. When a rim of the liquid does not separate around the edge of the butter, it is done OR
• remove a spoonful of the hot butter from the pan and hold it away from steam for 2 minutes. It is done if the butter remains mounded on the spoon.

4. Add orange extract and mix the butter. Pack in clean jars and process for 10 minutes in a boiling water canner.

NOTE instead semi-sweet chocolate chips, you may add 226 g (8 oz) of Nestle pure cocoa and 100 g (3.5 oz) sugar.

Available from Amazon

The Practical Guide to Making Salami is a companion book to The Art of Making Fermented Sausages, published in 2008. Since then, more information has become available; safety standards have been updated and tightened, new cultures have appeared, and getting supplies and newer equipment online has become more accessible. The most relevant theory has been transferred from The Art of Making Fermented Sausages. Still, The Practical Guide to Making Salami includes plenty of new materials such as fermented spreadable sausages, acidified sausages, or combining acidulants with natural fermentation. The recipes section has been expanded and includes 264 selected recipes from different countries so the reader can immediately produce sausages.