Sugared Fruits Using No Eggwhite

I love the look of sugared fruit, but dislike the idea of using egg white because I want to eat the fruit later.  You can wash the egg white off, but I’d still rather do without it.  This method uses thinned mashmallow cream for the sugar to stick.  Much better.

You can make sugared grapes, cumquats, fresh cranberries, apples, tangerines/clementines, oranges, plums, etc.   The smaller fruits look great on top of a cake as “sugar plums”  set on top of white icing.  The larger ones look wonderful as part of a centerpiece. 

Sugared Fruit
Use this “recipe” as a guide for any fruits that you sugar.

Wash and dry all fruit, including 1/4 cup whole cranberries, fresh or frozen.
Cut 1/2 pound of green grapes and 1/2 pound of red grapes into small bunches of 3 or 4 grapes each. 
Spread out sheets of waxed paper to put coated fruit on.  Put some sugar in a shallow bowl.
In a small bowl, mix  4 teaspoons water with 2 teaspoons of marchmallow cream.  (Ratio is always 2-to-1.)

Brush fruit with the mashmallow cream mixture, then hold the fruit over the sugar bowl and spoon sugar above all sides to cover evenly.  Place sugared fruit on the waxed paper to air-dry.  Let them dry 4-6 hours before placing them on a cake or in a centerpiece.

These sugared fruits will last about as long as they would have if they were not sugared & not refrigerated.
Very pretty, very easy, and fun to eat afterwards!

Just to be clear, these are not real “sugar plums.”

From the wikipedia article on sugar plums:
“‘Plum’ in the name of this confection does not mean plum in the sense of the fruit of the same name. At one time, “plum” was used to denote any dried fruit. ^[3] Sugar plums can be made from any combination of dried plums (aka prunes), dried figs, dried apricots, dried dates, and dried cherries. The dried fruit is chopped fine and combined with chopped almonds, honey, and aromatic spices, such as anise seed, fennel seed, caraway seeds, and cardamom. This mixture would then be rolled into balls, often then coated in sugar or shredded coconut.”
Those sound pretty good too.