Baking With Persimmons

Scroll down for recipes my family has enjoyed for decades!

I'm a fall fanatic. There are several many reasons why this is my preferred season of the four, and persimmons are one of them. On trees in the Northern Hemisphere, persimmons are in season from late September through late Nov./early December. There was a persimmon tree in the yard of my granny's house, where I lived for most of my late childhood through adolescence (the tree was of the lovely oval-shaped Hachiya variant). There would inevitably be a weekend in October where we'd get out the fruit picker and harvest as much of the fruit as we could reach; there'd be enough to fill 2 dozen paper grocery bags, and that was just of what we could reach (the local birds and squirrels were allowed to enjoy the rest). We'd set the picked persimmons on every flat surface of the home available to allow them to finish ripening and then extract, measure and freeze the pulp a week or two later. With my mom, we'd defrost pulp as needed to make one of a few go-to recipes for baked goods where persimmon is the star ingredient/flavor.

All of the recipes we followed came from the Persimmon Time pamphlet as prepared by the University of California's Agricultural Extension Service, the cute little zine-y thing shown in the photo for this rec. This edition is a reprint dating to 1986--how my family came into possession of it, I've never thought to ask, but this heirloom is now wedged in on the shelf where I keep my cookbooks. The staining on the pages speaks for itself as to how many decades of use they have accumulated. Fruit fact of choice from the publication: "One medium-size [persimmon] fruit furnishes one-half the [Vitamin] 'A' needed daily, a fifth of the Vitamin C needed, and is a fair source of iron." The pulp of ripe persimmons can be enjoyed straight out of the flesh. Dried persimmon/persimmon leather is so good--Trader Joe's sometimes has this packaged in their dried fruit section.

Here are the baking recipes that had a part in defining the autumns/early winters of my youth and I continue to make for the sake of tradition today!

Persimmon Drop Cookies
This is it--the baking recipe that elicits teary nostalgia out of me. I've eaten literally hundreds of cookies prepared with this recipe. When measuring persimmon pulp for freezing, our standard was 2 cups for the convenience of making a double batch using this recipe. Note the handwritten mod for the sugar amount--ripened persimmons are plenty sweet on their own and need little assistance from additional sugar to shine as a treat.

Persimmon Bread
A glorious breakfast or mid-morning snack can be found in 1-2 slices of this recipe. I've kept the recipe for persimmon griddle cakes in the frame because, though I've never made them, there's no way they can't be bomb.

Persimmon Cake
This is the dessert of November & December that I crave most of all. Served warm with a scoop of French vanilla, you're halfway to heaven. The raisins are optional, but the nuts, specifically walnuts, are optional only for allergies and are then otherwise a must. "Favorite sauce"--never bothered as this is perfectly delightful by the fluffy forkful on its own.