Easy, delicious, and festive, these homemade Sugar Plums are a unique treat to make this holiday season! With dried fruit, warming spices, and a sugary crunch, these will get you in the holiday spirit.
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Why We Love This Recipe
- Super easy recipe: All you need to do is pulse all of the ingredients in a food processor, roll the mixture into a plum-like shape, and coat with coarse sugar. It's really that easy.
- Christmas in a bite: If you're not quite in the holiday spirit yet, these will have visions of sugar plums dancing in your head. With dried fruit and spices, these have the flavor of a fruitcake, except they're actually tasty!
- They look amazing: With a little bit of purple sugar, rosemary and a toothpick, you can make these look just like plums, so they're perfect for bringing to parties to drum up some conversation.
Ingredients and Notes
- Prunes: These are dried plums, so they're perfect for this recipe.
- Dried apricots: You can also used dates or another dried, sticky fruit.
- Dried cranberries: You can sub this out for more apricots, dates, or another dried fruit of your choice. Raisins or golden raisins would also be great substitutions.
- Almonds: We used unsalted almonds and chopped them up.
- Pecans: We used unsalted pecans and chopped them.
- Jam: We used cherry jam, but you can use whatever flavor you prefer. Raspberry, apricot and fig are all great choices.
- Orange zest: We used freshly grated zest.
- Spices: We used cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves, cardamom, and salt, but you can use your favorite blend of spices. We'd imagine pumpkin spice would also work really well here. If you don't have cardamom, you can leave it out.
- Sugar: We used coarse sugar to coat the plums, but you could also use regular sugar, though the effect won't be quite the same. We used this naturally colored purple sugar to make these really look like plums, but regular sugar is fine too!
- Rosemary: We used a 2-leaf section of rosemary to create a "stem" for the Sugar Plums.
Step-by-step Instructions
PREP: These homemade sugar plums taste best if you toast the nuts ahead of time. To do so, spread the nuts on a sheet pan and bake at 350˚F for 6-7 minutes, until they smell fragrant and nutty.
STEP 1: Chop all of the dried fruit finely. Add the fruit and nuts to a food processor and pulse until finely chopped. Add all remaining ingredients (except sugar) and pulse again until the mixture is stick and comes together.
STEP 2: Use a 1 tablespoon cookie scoop to portion out the plums, then shape into an oval. Optional: use a toothpick to make an indentation on the front. Roll in sugar and (optional) stick a little rosemary sprig in the top as a stem. Enjoy!
Expert Tips and FAQs
- Toast the nuts for extra flavor. This isn't 100% essential, but it adds extra flavor!
- Chop up all your fruit before it goes in the food processor. This will make it much easier to get evenly-sized pieces. If it's not chopped first, you may end up with some big pieces of dried fruit.
- Use a toothpick to create that trademark plum cleft, then create a depression in the top of your sugar plum with your finger, and add a piece of rosemary to get that "stem" look.
- If you don't have a food processor, you'll have to chop everything as finely as possible to get them to stick together.
- This is the food processor we use for all of our recipes.
- Using coarse, colored sugar will give you the best look and texture. This is the purple sugar we used (and it's naturally colored!).
- Storage: These sugar plums will last in the refrigerator for up to several weeks. You can also freeze them for long term storage (up to 6 months).
Related Recipes
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📖 Recipe
Sugar Plums
- Total Time: 15 minutes
- Yield: 12-16 Sugar Plums 1x
- Diet: Vegan
Description
Easy, delicious, and festive, these Sugar Plums are a unique treat to make this holiday season! With dried fruit, warming spices, and a sugary crunch, these will get you in the holiday spirit.
Ingredients
- ½ cup prunes, finely chopped
- ¼ cup dried apricots or dates, finely chopped
- ¼ cup dried cranberries, finely chopped
- ½ cup toasted, unsalted almonds, chopped
- ¼ cup toasted, unsalted pecans, chopped
- 2 tablespoons cherry jam
- ¾ tsp orange zest
- ¼ tsp cinnamon
- ⅛ tsp nutmeg
- ⅛ tsp ground cloves
- ⅛ tsp cardamom
- Pinch salt
- ½ cup coarse sugar for coating (this is the purple sugar we used)
Instructions
- These homemade sugar plums taste best if you toast the nuts ahead of time. To do so, spread the nuts on a sheet pan and bake at 350˚F for 6-7 minutes, until they smell fragrant and nutty. If you want to skip the toasting step, that's fine.
- Chop all of the dried fruit finely. Add the fruit and nuts to a food processor and pulse until finely chopped. Add all remaining ingredients (except sugar) and pulse again until the mixture is sticky and comes together.
- Use a 1 tablespoon cookie scoop to portion out the plums, then shape into an oval. Optional: use a toothpick to make an indentation on the front. Roll in sugar until well coated and (optional) stick a little rosemary sprig in the top as a stem. Enjoy!
Notes
Storage: These sugar plums will last in the refrigerator for up to several weeks. You can also freeze them for long term storage (up to 6 months).
You can really use any combination of dried fruits and nuts as long as you keep the quantities the same!
Toast the nuts for extra flavor. This isn't 100% essential, but it adds extra flavor!
Chop up all your fruit before it goes in the food processor. This will make it much easier to get evenly-sized pieces. If it's not chopped first, you may end up with some big pieces of dried fruit.
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 5 minutes
- Category: Snacks
- Method: No Cook
- Cuisine: American
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 4 Sugar Plums
- Calories: 79
- Sugar: 6 g
- Sodium: 146.7 mg
- Fat: 3.5 g
- Carbohydrates: 11.7 g
- Fiber: 1.1 g
- Protein: 1.5 g
Jessica says
These get 5 stars because other people loved them, and the recipe says exactly what they’ll taste like - fruit cake - but better. I didn’t love them. But I really don’t like fruit cake. I made them because it felt necessary. In American we sing about sugar plums but zero people know what they are. It was fun to bring a deeply traditional Christmas treat to the table. Some lives them and others were nice to say it was good but not finish it. lol, I’m curious what they would taste like with dried cherries instead of prunes. That’s the flavor I’m not a huge fan of anyways.
I dyed some sugar purple but the color wasn’t as vibrant as the picture which was a little disappointing. I thought I used course sugar too, but it all just soaked up, there was reminisce of purple but vague.
Liz says
Do I store them in the fridge with the sugar coated? Or do I coat them when I take them out? Thank you
Lexi says
Either is fine! We store ours in the fridge with the sugar coating.
John says
Tried these on 12-6-24 and they turned out very nicely. I pretty much followed the recipe as is, although I substituted ginger for the cardamom. I also discovered that you can get purple sanding sugar at Kroger. Give them a try.
Alex G says
Question- does it need to be stored in the refrigerator or can it be in stored with other cookies in a jar (on the counter)? I’m making a box of variety of cookies and want to include this.
Lexi says
Hi! It's best to keep these in the fridge because of the jam.
Alex G says
Thank you- and have you ever used black cherry jam? Is it a big difference?
Marie says
Lexi & Mom,
I've always wanted to serve up the traditional, but elusive, sugar plums. I saw you on Fbk. This recipe looks ridicks easy. Even tho no allergies here, I plan to use some pumpkin seeds as well, just cuz they're in the pantry. I cannot wait to make them.
Lexi says
Thank you so much 🙂 Enjoy!
Sharon Neal says
Can you substitute dates for the prunes?
Lexi says
Yes that will work!
Elsie says
These are so cute! My family has nut allergies, can you recommend any substitutions? Perhaps pumpkin/sunflower seeds or rice krispies?
Lexi says
Thanks so much! I would personally try pumpkin seeds.