Making Wild Persimmon Cake

Subtitled, "Having your cake and eating it, too"

I've never fully understood that statement.  Of course I want to eat the cake in addition to having it!  What good is having a cake if you don't eat it?  Do you remember the other day when I posted about Harvesting Wild Persimmons from a tree in our yard?  If you missed it click here: Harvesting Wild Persimmons at Our Maker's Acres Family Farm

Today I'm going to show you our favorite way to eat persimmons that we harvested, pureed and put in the freezer. Not every cookbook that you open has recipes for persimmons.  For that you have to pull out a small-town cook book put together by a church or a garden club or some such group.  We were able to find the recipe in this cookbook:

You can tell this cookbook gets used by the stains on the cover!!

These cookbooks are put together by friends and family and have the name of the person who submitted the recipe directly under it.  Many times they contain recipes for fruits grown locally like figs, blackberries, mayhaws, etc.  It is kind of a walk down memory lane as you remember people as you use their recipes. Sometimes we will make alterations to the recipe and make notes in the margins.

So here we've gathered all of the ingredients together and Tricia is dumping the persimmon puree in a mixing bowl along with the other stuff.  This recipe is super easy.  We substitute the pecans I'm currently shelling for the walnuts that the recipe calls for.  We freeze 1 1/2 cups of persimmons in each freezer bag as we intend to make this cake over and over.  Counting this bag, I think we can make 11 more persimmon cakes before our inventory runs out.  That equates to 1 cake a month until the next persimmon harvest.

Ingredient list for wild persimmon cake

A closer photo of the persimmon pulp:

Persimmon Pulp

After an hour of cooking at 325 degrees Fahrenheit, the cake is ready to eat.  You can see that this cake is quickly devoured at our house.  It is so moist and dense.  It is sweet and flavorful.  We normally cut by the lines that the Bundt pan leaves on the cake.  I like it when I get the BIG piece.

Quickly disappearing persimmon cake

Each slice is heavy.  This is not angel food cake.  If you are eating it on a paper plate, those flimsy ones won't do the trick.  You'd better double up and put two together.

You can almost taste it, can't you?

We enjoy Wild Persimmon Cake and look forward to the fall harvest of persimmons each year so we can make Mrs. Sandy's cake.  Or as Marie Antoinette might say, "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" or "Let them eat CAKE!"

Photo Credit

I think we will, Marie!