Processing Wild Persimmons

Other than pumpkin-spice flavored everything, the one thing that lets me know that fall is just around the corner is the ripening of the wild persimmons on our tree.  When we first bought the property twenty four years ago, there were two wild persimmon trees, but one succumbed.  The remaining tree produces hundreds of little golf ball-sized persimmons at this time every year.  They turn orange and fall to the ground and we go out and pick them up.

They are sticky, sweet and the birds love them.  My neighbor told me that prior to us moving here the raccoons loved them, too!  They would climb up in the tree and eat until they were full.  We haven't seen raccoons in a long time.  Each day we go out to the base of the tree and pick up the persimmons that have fallen.  

We take them in and wash them up.  They are very soft.  Some of them have broken as they hit the ground.  To be honest with you, most people would just let the birds eat them.  I'll show you why in a minute.  Each persimmon has a large number of big seeds in them.

We have a food mill that we sit on top of an 8 cup Pyrex measuring bowl.  We feed the persimmons into the food mill and crank.  The persimmon flesh is pushed through the holes in the mill and the seeds stay on top.

We spoon out the seeds and put them in a bowl.  They'll be fed to the animals or go in the compost pile.  Can you see what I mean about the seeds?  You get more seeds from each persimmon than you do edible fruit.

But that's okay.  The fruit we get is delicious!

We have a recipe for a persimmon Bundt cake that we have enjoyed for years.  We even have altered it to make a chocolate persimmon cake.  When it comes out of the oven, the fragrance fills the kitchen and it is so good to eat it while it is still warm.  Each recipe calls for a cup and a half of persimmon.

So we package the processed persimmons in pint-sized freezer bags with 1 and 1/2 cups of persimmon in each bag and then freeze them in stacks.  That way we can look at the stack in the freezer and inventory and know how many cakes we'll be eating!

So far we have 8 cakes in the freezer with plenty more persimmons left to fall.  It looks like it will be a good year.  That's a good thing because with the drought last year, we didn't pick any, so we need to build our inventory back up.

A Sign of Fall

Living in the south as we do, it can be officially Fall but still feel very much like summer.  It is still swelteringly hot and humid, the grass is still growing, mosquitoes still biting and the leaves haven't started falling.  One harbinger of Fall is the ripening (and falling) of the persimmons from our wild persimmon tree in the yard.  The fruit falls from about twenty feet up in the tree to the ground and the soft St. Augustine grass catches it, protecting it (most times) from bursting. 

You can see how tall the tree is, although it is hard to zoom in and see the persimmons up there.

Here is one I zoomed in on.  Their bright orange color is easy to spot and you can gauge how many more will fall.  We go out with a colander every day and pick up what's fallen.  We gather a bunch.  We used to have twice as many as we had two trees, but one of them died.

Unlike normal persimmons, these wild ones are slightly smaller than a golf ball.  Each persimmon has a 'cap' that we pop off and leave on the ground.  We also pinch off a black tip at the bottom of each fruit.  We bring the day's harvest in and wash them up in the sink.

We process them prior to putting them away.  In order to process them, we run them through a full mill.  

By hand cranking the mill, the fruit is broken up and the processed fruit is squeezed through a screen at the bottom.  This leaves only the skin and the large seeds, in the mill while the processed fruit falls into a measuring bowl below.

You can see the screen at the bottom of the food mill and also get a good idea of what the processed fruit looks like.  It is very, very sweet!

We measure the processed persimmons in a big measuring cup.

The reason we meticulously measure the processed fruit is because we make delicious persimmon cakes with them.  The recipe for a persimmon cake calls for 1 1/2 cups of persimmon.  We pour exactly 1 1/2 cups of persimmon into each zip loc bag, using a canning funnel to avoid making such a big mess in the process.

We seal each bag up, label it and stack in the freezer neatly.

We can open the freezer, take inventory of how many bags we have stored up.  Each bag = 1 cake.  It may be my sweet tooth talking, but I see 14 cakes in the freezer.  Nothing like a hot persimmon cake coming out of the oven on a cool, fall day!

It is Time to Collect Wild Persimmons!

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; - Ecclesiastes 3:1-2

The passage of time is marked by things that the Creator made that arrive and depart like clockwork - Clockwork more sophisticated, precise and accurately made than the finest Swiss craftsman could ever hope to create.  If you are observant, you can pick these things out.  As the tired long days of summer play out each year in late August and early September, if you glance upward you can see golf-ball sized, golden-orange fruit dangling from the limbs of our wild persimmon tree.

They dangle there, heavy and sickly sweet until the appointed time at which they fall.  Some hit the ground and burst spilling the flesh onto the freshly mown grass.  Some fall intact, but are eaten up by blue jays, blackbirds and crows.  If we are diligent and get out to the side yard with a bucket, we are able to scavenge the fruit that the fall and birds hadn't ruined.  Each day we try to get out and harvest the persimmons.  This tree is a wild persimmon tree, probably planted by birds.  Ever since we moved here in 2001, we've enjoyed its fruit.

Many people wouldn't bother as there are many big seeds in the little fruit.  However, we like the flavor.  It is a lot of work to process the wild persimmon flesh.  The best way we've found to do it is to press the flesh through a sieve placed over a glass bowl.  The flesh oozes through the sieve, while the large seeds and skin remains behind in the sieve.  It is slow work.  Once you work your way through it, you turn the sieve over and scrape the remaining persimmon flesh that is stuck to the sieve into the glass bowl.

The seeds and skins can be composted, but be ready.  I've never seen a seed that has a higher germination rate than wild persimmons.  Well, maybe the Chinese tallow tree's germination rate is higher.

The persimmon flesh in the bowl is clean and ready to be packaged and frozen for later use.

Our favorite thing to do with the wild persimmon we process is to make persimmon cake.  The recipe Tricia uses calls for 1 and 1/2 cups of processed persimmon so we package that amount in zip loc bags and freeze them.  That way, we can look in the freezer and ask, "How many future 'persimmon cakes' do we have in the freezer?"

Right now we have 12. My goal is 'just a few more'...

Wild Louisiana Persimmons - An indicator that Fall is Right around the corner

Just the other morning, we experienced some cooler temps with lower humidity.  It was so nice!  It was a hint of what is to come.  Normally around this time of year the wild persimmon tree in our front yard begins depositing its little golden fruit all over the grass beneath the tree, so I strolled over to see if it was persimmon time yet.

We originally had two trees, but one died.  As I walked up to the tree, I could see the fruit on the branches.

Here is a close-up shot so that you can see some of the fruit.  Most of the persimmons are green, but they ripen very quickly and then fall to the ground.  This is a wild persimmon.  Some people call them Indian persimmons.  They multiply quickly, dotting the landscape.  In fact every year I have to pull several that grow up wild from the flower beds.  They also pop up in the yard, but i mow over them.  I like finding more and more things that grow wild that are edible in our area.  It's like a garden that you don't have to tend to!

Here are a few of the persimmons that have fallen.  You don't want to eat them when they are green as they are very bitter.  These are much smaller than the Japanese persimmons that we would eat when I was younger. The actual fruit of the wild persimmon is golf-ball sized and loaded with large seeds.  Most people would think that it isn't an efficient use of time to de-seed the persimmons in order to yield the very sweet persimmon pulp, but we do it.  We've perfected a little process that does the trick easily in no time at all.

First, we pick the persimmons that have fallen and litter the ground underneath the tree.  Some will burst on impact, but a large number survive the fall intact.  You can tell the ones that are ripe because they are very soft and have wrinkled skin.  We put them in a colander in the vegetable sink and wash the bits of grass that are stuck to them.  Then we remove the caps off the top of them.

We place about ten of the little persimmons in a fine mesh sieve that sits on top of a Pyrex measuring cup.  With a rubber spoon/spatula, we bust the persimmons up, pressing the mashed up mixture into the sieve.  This allows the sticky sweet fruit to go through the sieve and into the bowl below.  All the seeds and skin remains in the sieve and we will spoon that out and place in the compost pile.

The resulting persimmon pulp is the consistency of baby food.  It smells like Fall (if Fall has a smell) and is a golden color that looks like Fall as well.

We continue this process until we've extracted exactly 1 1/2 cups on persimmon pulp.  Why 1 1/2 cups?  Well that is the exact amount of persimmon pulp you need to make Persimmon Cake, a favorite at our house.  You can see a previous blog post that contains the recipe by clicking HERE.

So while the tree continues dropping fruit, we keep processing them, freezing them in quart-sized freezer bags that each contain 1 1/2 cups of processed persimmon. We'll laugh as we inventory the stock of persimmon in the freezer by saying, "We have 13 persimmon cakes so far in the freezer," wondering if the inventory will last us until next Fall.  Russ took a few Ziploc bags of frozen persimmon with him to college to make cakes for him and his roommates.  Here's what we have so far:

There is a nice bucket or two or three left to fall out of the tree, but right now, there's 13 persimmon cakes in the freezer just waiting to be baked and eaten!  

Processing Persimmons

Around this time every year, little orange persimmons start falling from the skies in our side yard. I'm talking about wild persimmons.  I've posted about these before, but perhaps someone's just started following us.  The wild persimmons are a little smaller than a golf ball and a chock-full of big seeds. As a result, most people might not bother with them.

We like to make a persimmon cake with them so we gather them up and package them.  One of Benjamin's chores this time of year is to go pick the freshly fallen persimmons before the birds get them.  Once ripened, they'll fall into the soft grass beneath the trees.  They are very, very sweet.  My neighbor told me in the past he caught a family of raccoons in the tree picking the sweet fruit.

Wild Persimmon that just hit the ground

He'll pluck the cap off of them and bring them inside, dumping them into a colander, and wash them off.  The fruit sometimes will burst and the inside of the fruit is very sticky.  Little pieces of grass will stick to the fruit, so we wash all of that off.

One day's harvest

We'll batch process them by putting a few of them in a fine-meshed sieve placed over a measuring cup and use a wooden spoon to mash the fruit, pushing the sticky pureed fruit through the sieve and into the measuring cup.  You can see that the sieve holds the seeds and skin back.  We'll scoop all that into the compost bucket.

The sieve stops the seeds from going through

Here's the bottom of the sieve.  Noting but sticky sweet fruit dripping into the measuring cup.

Pureed Persimmon

After a short task of hand-processing, this is what is left - seedless persimmon puree.  We'll do this every day for a week or so while the fruit from our tree is falling.  

Now as discussed, we used this to make a delicious cake.  The recipe for persimmon cake calls for 1 and 1/2 cups of persimmon puree, so we'll freeze individual packages containing that amount and stack them in the freezer flat like below.  Once frozen we'll move them to the freezer outside.  We can look in the freezer and determine how many cakes we'll be looking forward to! 

A future persimmon cake

Here's the post from last year that contains the recipe: Recipe for Persimmon Cake

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!

Harvesting Wild Persimmons

When we bought our land and built our house there were two trees on the property that we immediately noticed - wild persimmon trees.  Each year, at about this time, they load up with fruit.  Unfortunately one of the trees died this past winter, but the other tree is loaded up.  You can see a ripe persimmon in the picture below if you look hard and also a few green ones.

I see a ripe one that'll be falling soon.

As far as picking them, you really don't pick them off the tree.  You pick them off the ground because they fall to the ground when ripe.  My neighbor told me that raccoons used to climb the trees and pick them, but we haven't seen any up there, thank goodness.  Here are a couple of wild persimmons that have fallen to the ground that I'm about to put in a bucket.

Ripe wild persimmons

Now, to give you some perspective, wild persimmons are very small.  They aren't even the size of a golf ball. Their size, coupled with the fact that they are loaded with big seeds might lead you to believe that they are too much trouble to mess with.  Well, you'd be mistaken.  These little rascals are sticky sweet!  We go out every day for a couple of weeks and pick up all that are on the ground.  You have to grab them quickly or the birds will get them or the quality will quickly deteriorate in the hot sun since they are ripened when they fall and hit the ground.  In fact, some burst on impact.  As a side note, they fit nicely in the palm of your hand and can be thrown with laser-like accuracy at unsuspecting people on the lawn mower, making a sticky mess.  Don't ask me how I know that little factoid.

A few ready to bring in and process

Here are some that we are washing now.  Seriously, would you buy something like that at the grocery store? Probably not.  Some are busted.  Some have holes in them from birds pecking them.  They're just ugly.  But don't judge a book by its cover - they are good.  It is interesting how we've been conditioned to purchase perfect, unblemished fruit, when that just doesn't happen very often - at least on our property.  There's always some critter that has gotten to it first.  We simply cut the bad part out - no big deal.

Washing them

The first thing we do is peel the little cap off of the persimmon.  I also have some of the seeds of a busted one in the bowl so you can see the size of the seeds that are in them.  There are a lot of seeds for the size of the fruit.

Caps and Seeds for the compost pile

I used to do this process by hand, squishing the sweet flesh between my fingers to separate the seeds from the flesh, but Tricia perfected a new, cleaner process whereby you throw a few persimmons into a sieve on top of a large measuring cup and use a wooden spoon to break the fruit, stir the fruit and push just the flesh through the sieve and into the measuring cup.

Patricia's Patented Persimmon Process

It doesn't take very long before all that's left in the sieve are the seeds.

If you lift the sieve, you can see the fruit of your labor, pardon the pun.  It is a rich orange color, sort of like apricots and is the consistency of baby food.

Fast forward the process and you have 3 cups of wild persimmon fruit minus the seeds from today's bounty.

Processed Wild Persimmon

One more thing, be sure to scrape the bottom of the sieve as a lot of the sweet, sticky fruit clings to the bottom!

Don't miss out on this!

We make persimmon cake with this and I'll show you the recipe when we make a wild persimmon cake, but the recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups of persimmon for one cake.  We pack exactly 1 1/2 cups of persimmon puree into a zip loc freezer bag, so we just thaw one bag each time we want a cake.

Ready to go in the freezer

Just stack them in the freezer and pull out as needed to make a delicious cake.  Stacking them flat to freeze makes them stackable and enables you to open your freezer door without having a frozen bag of persimmon puree fall out and land on your toe.

Six bags of persimmon = 6 cakes

Maybe we'll make a persimmon cake tomorrow...  (Hint, Hint, Tricia)