A Couple of Recipes

Since I wrote about persimmons, I've had an inquiry about the recipe we use for persimmon pudding.

Here it is.  In addition, I'm adding a great recipe for chewy persimmon cookies.  Both of these recipes are used by my mother-in-law.  I'm pretty certain that, if you try them, you'll like them too!

Mim’s Persimmon Pudding

2c. persimmon pulp

1 ½ c. sugar

1 ½ c. flour

1 ½ c. milk

1 tsp. sugar

1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. salt

1 tsp. cinnamon

2 eggs

¼ stick margarine or butter, melted

Mix the dry ingredients together.  Add the wet ingredients and mix well.  Pour the batter into a buttered 9x13-inch pan.  Bake in a 325^o oven for 45 minutes.  Serve with a dollop of ice cream or Cool Whip® on top.

Mim’s Persimmon Cookies

1 c. persimmon pulp

1 c. chopped nuts

1 c. raising

2 c. flour

1 c. sugar

½ c. shortening

1 tsp. soda

1 egg

½ tsp. each of cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg

dash salt

½ c. flaked coconut

½ c shredded carrots

Mix all the ingredients together well.  Drop the stiff batter by the spoonful onto a greased cookie sheet.  Bake for 15-20 minutes at 350^o.  Makes about 2-3 dozen.

            Once your friends and family try these, you’ll probably need to double the recipe to allow for ‘take home bags’.

Persimmon Time!

A rainy cold front moved through yesterday and last night.  With the wind, rain, and cooler temperatures has come the urge to pick up some persimmons.  This afternoon was crisp and cool and sunny.  Patti and I headed over to Martin County and went up on our hill there to a couple of dependable persimmon trees.

We gathered a gallon or so of the squishy fruits and brought them home to run through the strainer.  One important note to prospective persimmon pluckers--be sure to pick up only the ones that have fallen to the ground.  They are ripe and ready to use.  The ones on the trees aren't ready!  Try one and you'll see what I mean! 

The trees on our place are fairly loaded with persimmons this year.  We'll be going back every day or so to pick up a mess of them.  Late afternoon is a good time to pick them up, as they have had all day to fall, and the night crew of deer, foxes, raccoons, possums, and other critters hasn't had their turn at them.  Overnight, most of the persimmons on the ground will disappear as the animals load up on them.  The nutritious fruits help the various wild animals lay on their important layer of fat for the winter.  Just about every wild animal and bird will eat persimmons.

The pulpy fruits were squishy ripe.

This tree is loaded with persimmons.  One major caveat,  don't eat the persimmons off the tree!

Here we're running the persimmons through the strainer.

 After picking through the fruits and removing the big pieces of debris, leaves, calyxes, etc., we ran them through the strainer.  It is a messy, but rewarding job.

Each bag has 2 cups of pulp, just right for a big pudding.

The finished product.  Persimmon pudding is simply incomparable!

For those of you who do not live in an area of the country where you can find persimmons, you are missing a treat.  There is simply no dessert that can quite compare to a persimmon pudding, especially when it's topped with a dollop of whipped cream or a scoop of ice cream!  If, by some remote chance, one might become tired of persimmon pudding, then they can also be made into chewy persimmon cookies or loaves of persimmon bread!

Life is good!