Sugar Plums

Tessa Mesa, (who lives in the wilds of Arizona north of Prescott,) has threatened to drag me and make me run along side her new pickup truck when we tour family cemeteries in Iowa during our genealogy quest this April unless I give her my recipe for Sugar Plums.

This is a currently popular, but very old recipe using dried fruits. Using an old fashioned food grinder or a modern food chopper, a thick paste is made by combining dried apricots, golden raisins, black currants, dried figs, dates and pecans. Flavorings such as Orange, Rum or Brandy are added. The paste is formed into marble sized balls and rolled in finely chopped nuts or finely chopped flake coconut.

Variations of the recipe are made by adding or subtracting the types of dried fruits, crystallized ginger, flavorings and extracts as well as the kinds of mixtures the balls are rolled in. Rather than grind the dates into the paste, pitted dates and citrus flavored pitted prunes can be stuffed with the apricot mixture. Taste and imagination determine portions of ingredients.

I hope the above recipe lets me have the back seat of the king cab all to myself!