Canning Plums - Sweet Plum Sauce

Is there something special about plums that makes them more runny than other fruit?  For the second year in a row my attempt at plum jam has made plum sauce instead.  It's super yummy and folks loved it last year so I guess it will do this year, too.

First I put 1/3 of the plums in the crockpot with about a cup of water.  I counted them as I put them in so I would be sure to fish out all of the pits.  DD#3 is an awesome little kitchen helper so as I scooped out each plum, she did all the pit picking.  We dumped the next 1/3 of plums into the juice, let it cook about 6 hours and repeated the pitting.  One more round and we were done.

This is the plum pulp.  I always think it looks gross, but whatever.

It sat in my fridge for a week before I was ready to make the jam.  I measure out 6 cups and it looked like I could double the batch.  Sure enough, it was just over 12 cups.

My pot was pretty full as I warmed it up.  I added 2 boxes of pectin.  I didn't like the look of the few skin bits floating around so I got out the immersion blender.

The immersion blender is one of my favorite kitchen gadgets.  See how much more smooth it looks after blending up the bits? 

Uh-oh.  Time to add 8 cups of sugar.  Will it fit in my pot? 

Nope.  I had to get out my next-size-up pot.

Once it was all cooked and boiled hard for a minute I poured it into hot jars, and sealed with boiled lids and rings.  Finally, I ran them through the water bath with a 15 minute boil.  After every jar had sealed with a satisfying pop (best part of canning) I labeled them with the date and "sweet plum sauce" since it was definitely too runny for jam. 

It made a little over a gallon.

Katie