Dried plums

Prunes are dried plums and, in the time of woodfired bakery ovens, unripe plums were dried in the falling heat of the oven, just as the pears for the bakkemoezevlaai. This was done as a means to store fruit, but also because some fruits just didn’t ripen enough for them to be nice to eat raw. The process of slow drying gave them the sweetness the lack of sun during our short summers couldn’t. The same happened with apricots.