On the Subject of Winter Produce: Persimmon Cake

Dear readers, I have a great deal of catch up to do and a significant number of stories that need to be told about the pictures I've been taking for the last few months. We'll start with persimmons and fast forward to the present. This will include tales about asado negro and how my eyes wept from the vinegared fumes, to preserved lemons and the furious pounding of cherry pits for sour cherry liqueur. But back to the persimmons. My parents went a bit mad buying persimmons back when Victoria was teetering on the cusp of winter. They ended up sharing some of the spoils of these persimmon shopping trips with me.

There are two kinds of persimmons - the astringent (e.g. hachiya) and the non-astringent kind (e.g. fuyu). Both types are high in fibre, contain tannins and are supposed to be good for your heart. The heart-shaped hachiya persimmon is not pictured here because in my haste to mash it into a pulp, I forgot to take a picture.

Unless you like furry tasting fruit, for consumption, the hachiya has to be ripe, so ripe that its skin becomes translucent and the fruit feels almost like mush. You can blet persimmons by simply putting them out in sunlight or by wrapping them in paper. My hachiya lived in my kitchen so it was alternately exposed to sunlight and temperatures hovering around zero. The tomato-shaped persimmons pictured here are the fuyu variation. The fuyu persimmon can be eaten when it's quite firm, and it's still lovely to eat even when it has ripened into a supple softness.

Persimmons can be eaten fresh, dried or cooked. I prefer the persimmon when it's still firm. I'm not generally a huge fan of mushy fruits although I did recently try a grenadilla and instantly fell in love with its crunchy seeds and sweet viscous flesh. Since my hachiya had ripened into the golden pulped treasure pictured above, I decided to make cake with it.

As for the rest of the fuyus, I made a darkly spiced persimmon paste out of them and froze it. I have plans for this paste. It will likely be used at some not too distant point in the future for meat dishes and perhaps another cake. Here's my recipe that I adapted from Fresh Approach Cooking:

Persimmon Cake

1 to 2 very ripe hachiya persimmons, yielding about 1 cup fork-mashed pulp
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 cups unsifted rice flour

1 tsp xanthan gum

1/2 tsp guar gum
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp each fresh nutmeg and ground cloves
3/4 cup butter
½ cup white sugar
½ cup brown sugar
1 egg
½ cup balkan style yoghurt, slightly diluted
1 tsp orange zest

Method:
 
1. Preheat oven to 350F.

2. Fork mash the persimmon into a pulp. Don't worry if it isn't perfectly smooth.

3. Sift together the flour, xanthan and guar gum, baking soda, baking powder, nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon.

4. In an large bowl, beat butter and sugar until fluffy for about 3 minutes. Add the egg and combine well. Add the persimmon pulp. Add half the flour mix and mix to just combine.

5. Add the yoghurt. Add the remaining flour and stir until it just comes together, then stir in the orange zest.

6. Grease your baking pan of choice with butter. You can use a bundt pan or cake ring or 9 inch cake pan. Spoon the batter in and bake for 45 minutes or more until knife comes out clean. Allow to cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then invert onto a platter to cool completely.

This is best served slightly warm. Before serving, dust lightly with powdered sugar. I loved eating this cake for breakfast!