Persimmon Pudding

I'm learning a lot of new Southern cooking & baking ingredients and recipes since living in North Carolina! In my CSA box this past week, I got 3 persimmons. For some reason, I thought persimmons were a flower?! Maybe they're both. They're a very pretty little fruit {or vegetable?}, don't you think? Maybe I should research just exactly what they are. Aaron is definitely a big fan of the new dessert. He doesn't usually make a big fuss over things, but the last couple of nights he can't wait to get his hands on it. Last night, out of the blue, he says "So, I think I might have a new favorite dessert!". Meaning the persimmon pudding.

Persimmon pudding is actually more cake-like than pudding-like. The entire consistency is a little more mushy than a true cake would be, but definitely mirrors a cake more than what I think of as pudding. I adapted the original recipe a little bit by adding a teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice and I would describe the taste as almost a pumpkin gingerbread.

The recipe calls for 1 cup of persimmon pulp. I had 3 persimmons and just used all of them. The persimmons that have an almost transparent skin and mushy insides, are the ripest & best. Just cut it in half and press through a fine-mesh sieve or food mill, discarding the flesh & seeds. I was impatient & wanted to make the pudding, so the more firm persimmons took a bit more elbow grease. I scooped out the insides with a spoon and mashed them through the sieve with a spatula and/or spoon.

This recipe is a definite "must make"...if you can get your hands on some persimmons!

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Persimmon Pudding
Adapted from: Allrecipes.com

Ingredients:
1 cup persimmon pulp
1 egg, beaten
1 1/4 cups sugar {I use raw cane}
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cups milk {I use raw, whole}
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
1/4 cup butter, melted

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 and butter a pie plate.* In a blender, combine all ingredients. Blend until smooth. Pour into buttered pie plate and bake for 40 -45 minutes.

*The original recipe used a 9x13 pan and to bake for 30 minutes, until a knife inserted in the center came out with no batter stuck to it. Baking it in a pie plate worked perfectly and created a little thicker portions of pudding. We like things a little more "mushy", so by using a pie plate, the center of the pudding was a little more soft-set.