Plum ice cream

Plums are supposed to be a summer fruit, but my Beauty plum tree doesn't know that. It just waits until [name redacted relative who loves plums] leaves town in mid-to-late spring. All of the plums then ripen, and by the time summer officially starts, no fruit is left on the tree. Sneaky plum tree.

Crafty plum tree detects plum lover's impending absence.

My plum tree also doesn't know that its ripe fruits are supposed to be red over yellow skin. Instead, they're electric red with just a bit of gold, and sometimes very dark.

Ripe Beauty plums

The insides are, however, just as golden and juicy and flavorful as they're supposed to be. The taste is both sweet and tart.

When you eat these plums out of hand,
you need to hold a towel to catch the drips.

The plums are so juicy that I didn't bother adding the water that the recipe called for.

The chopped plums with their juice

The recipe called for a tiny amount of kirsch, but Trader Joe's didn't have any. TJ did, however, have a plum brandy called slivovitz. It's a strong, eau-de-vie type liquor.

Zwack slivovitz

Pureeing the plums' golden flesh and red skin (with some sugar and a tiny bit of slivovitz) resulted in a beautiful pink ice cream.

Pink

I used a stick blender to puree (more or less) the mixture. I was prepared to accept some skin in the ice cream, but it turned out that all the skin stuck to the churning blade.

Conveniently, the plum skins stick to plastic.

The result was a soft, smooth ice cream with an intense plum flavor. A little goes a long way, but I'll definitely be making it again—probably this week.

This cup of ice cream is going to my friend Sandy.