Baked Blood Plum Brioches with Spiced Plum Sauce and Vanilla Custard

Blood plums, the red stone fruit of summer, have a long season and good shelf-life. They are wonderful in their natural state and also lend themselves extremely well to cooking (especially with spices) and preserving.

You only need a small amount of the sauce for this dessert, so preserve what you don’t need by filling hot, sterilised jars with the just-made sauce. Use it with ice-cream, a red fruit salad or a plum tart lined with vanilla cream. In