This Persimmon Pudding is an old fashioned recipe made with fresh persimmons and a whiff of spice.
Serve it with Lemon Curd. Recipe below.
This is a delicious, rare treat, indeed and can be prepared throughout the year, if you have access to canned or frozen persimmon pulp.
However, it is usually made in the fall with fresh home grown fruit from your back yard, or a neighbor's yard.
Persimmons fresh from the tree should only be used after the first frost of Fall.
The first frost softens the pulp of persimmons, taking away the characteristic bitterness of the lovely fruit.
Persimmons are sometimes hard to find at the grocery stores.
Farmer's markets and roadside fruit stands, usually have this fruit
in season, which is after the first frost in late fall.
Some grocery
stores carry them.
Once you locate a good source, purchase extra persimmons.
Prepare the
pulp by removing the peel and seeds, then freeze it to use later.
Thaw before using frozen pulp.
You can plant a tree (young seedling) from your local or mail
order nursery and have your own home grown supply in 2-3 years or more,
depending on the variety of tree you choose.
Make sure the variety is
adaptable to your locality.
Beat together sugar, butter, and eggs, until smooth.
Sift
together flour, soda, salt, and nutmeg.
Add flour and buttermilk
alternately starting and ending with flour.
Pour into a greased 9" x 13" baking pan and bake in preheated
oven 350F. for 1 hour or until knife inserted into pudding comes out
clean.
Cool in pan.
Cut into squares. Lift out of pan with a spatula.
Serve Persimmon Pudding plain, with the delicious Lemon Curd below or top with Homemade Whipped Cream.
In mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar until thoroughly blended.
Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
Stir in
grated lemon zest and juice.
Pour into top of a double boiler and cook stirring constantly,
until thickened to the consistency of thick gravy.
Remove from heat and
cool.
It will thicken more as it cools.
*Zest is the yellow outer most part of the rind of citrus fruit, and does not include the white, pithy part.
The Persimmon fruit is native to America.
The trees grew wild and still do, mostly in the South Eastern United States.
I gather wild persimmons in the Fall after they have fallen to the ground because they are then soft, ripe and delicious instead of being very bitter when picked from the tree.
You can peel your persimmons and freeze the fresh pulp to use later, if you are not going to use it immediately.
Persimmons can be eaten raw or used in pudding, bread, cake, cookie, muffing or other recipes.