Gudgin (or Ooray) Sprinkles

Breakfast this morning – homemade Greek yoghurt with the first of the season’s mangoes, the first of the season’s peaches, and the thing I am excited about at the moment, Gudgin, or Ooray, or Davidson’s plum powder sprinkles.

It’s late for the season, but I wanted to post it, if for no other reason than to remember it for myself.

Gudgin are tart and deeply flavoured and hugely good for you, anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory, neuroprotective, liver and kidney protective, decreasing bone loss, improving cardiovascular health – the kind of good for you that you’d like to have in your everyday. But the season for fresh Gudgin is short, and over all too soon.

They also make the best jam. Tart and sweet, just the right balance, deeply flavoured. But … there is only so much jam you can use, or even give away. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, and they are so very productive, I have reached that limit. 

Which is why I am so excited about this discovery. Gudgin dry beautifully, and when dried they reduce to a powder that stores in the fridge taking up almost no space, (and probably on the shelf too). It’s a tart powder that works in all the kind of places that tamarind paste works in Asian recipes, or, my current obsession, as a sprinkle on breakfast yoghurt. if you are still harvesting the last of your Gudgin, or Ooray (or, what used to be called Davidson’s plums), this is worth doing.

I halved them to remove the seeds, trying to catch as much as possible of the juice in the spot where the seeds were. Then I dehydrated them, first in the sun, simply laid out on a dark plate with a pyrex lid propped slightly open, but then, when the rain set in, inside in a dehydrator. They took about 15 hours to dry to crisp, and then I ground them up in a coffee grinder to a powder. About fifty plums filled a little spice bottle with powder, so it’s quite concentrated. And now I have most of a year’s supply of morning goodness and I’m so happy about it, I had to share.