We just had our first hard freeze in Missouri and that means it’s time to head for the woods and pick persimmons. This was a good year for the native fruit. We had adequate rains throughout the growing season, no killing April frost and mild temperatures all summer long. All along the banks of my home cove on Lake Pomme de Terre in S.W. Missouri are abundant stands of persimmon trees fairly bulging with the small orange fruits. The native variety is much smaller than the cultivars found at the supermarket. After the first frosts the taste gets tart sweet and the fruits become soft and edible. Early persimmons are hard, greenish and inedible, the taste so astringent that it will permanently pucker your mug. After the hard freeze all the fruits will be soft, orange in color and sweet but they will quickly fall from the trees and will immediately become forage for birds, raccoons, opossums, ground hogs and squirrels. It’s important to get to the crop ASAP after the first hard freeze or you will sacrifice your share to the hungry woodland creatures.
Persimmons have a thin skin and large seed at the center. To get the pulp for cooking you must put the fruits through a sieve or food mill. If you have a Kitchenaid mixer there is a food mill attachment that feeds into accessory power supply and makes an easy job of processing great quantities of fresh persimmon. A hand operated food mill is a lot more work but will give the kids something to do. Steam and soften the fruits in a small amount of water before attempting to pass them through a sieve.
Use the pulp to make cookies, pies and cakes. Last year I made persimmon cookies with walnuts and a persimmon chiffon pie with hickory nuts, that was a big hit at Thanksgiving dinner.
This year I’m going to do cake. Make a persimmon cake as you would an apple spice cake but substitute the persimmon pulp for apple sauce:
Grease and flour a nine inch cake pan set the oven to preheat at 350 degrees.
Mix together the dry ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1 t salt
1 t cinnamon
½ t fresh nutmeg
½ t ground cloves
cream ¾ cup butter and 1 cup brown sugar until fluffy
add one egg
½ cup Buttermilk
and 1 ½ cups persimmon puree
stir in 1 t orange zest
combine wet and dry ingredients and fold by hand
then add a cup of cracked pecan or walnut meats
continue to fold until the batter is smooth
Bake for 40 minutes or until a tester comes out clean
Serve warm dusted with powdered sugar and with a dollop of whipped cream or drizzle the warm cake with Grand Marnier liquor and let it sit for a few hours before dusting with the powdered sugar. You can flavor the sweetened whipped cream with a shot of Grand Marnier.
