This is what we started with... I boiled about 1kg of wild cherry plums in 500ml of water for around half an hour, I crushed the plums slightly with the potato masher to help them release their juice. After you have finished boiling leave it to infuse and cool.
After cooling slightly the wonderfully fragrant plum concoction was sieved through a colander to remove the larger pieces of plum pulp, skin and stones and then strained through muslin or a straining bag. The liquid is then measured to find out how much sugar to add and returned to the pan to heat through to help the sugar dissolve. We added 500g of sugar which was around half the measurement of our liquid which was one litre . This seems like a lot of sugar but we first tried 250g and the children decided it was still a little sharp, so we added some more. If you make this, the sugar can be added in stages until you find a level which is suitable to your taste buds.
Then the concentrated liquid can be bottled up and diluted to taste when ready to drink. We ended up with about 1 litre of concentrate, which has quite a syrupy consistency.
Beautiful colour isn't it?... I was hoping for a sunny photograph to show off how vibrant the colour is but it was cloudy this morning and please excuse the fingerprints on the bottle, I had little helpers. It tastes really wonderful, we took some to enjoy on our picnic today, definitely a big hit with the children.
