- FOR THE BREAD:
- 2 cups sifted cake flour
- ½ teaspoons salt
- 2 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 2 cups sugar
- ½ cup melted unsalted butter or vegetable oil
- 2 large eggs, at room temperature, lightly beaten
- 1 Tablespoon Bourbon
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 2 cups persimmon puree (about 3 cups of wild persimmons)
- FOR THE FROSTING:
- 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
- 18 oz package cream cheese
- 2½ teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 tsp bourbon
- 4 to 5 cups confectioners’ sugar
- FOR THE BREAD:
- First things first: you have to get the persimmon puree'. A note about wild persimmons... you know they're ripe if they've fallen off the tree or are SUPER wrinkly and soft... like a deflated helium balloon. Once they're at that stage, and you've got a food mill, the you can use it to separate the skin and the seeds from the pulp. If not, then peel the skin away from the pulp and squeeze it into a wire strainer over a bowl. Using the back of a spoon, push the pulp through the strainer and into the bowl, leaving the large seeds. The pulp can be frozen for use later.
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
- Prepare your bread or cake pans by coating the insides with butter and lightly flouring the inside.
- Mix all of the dry ingredients/spices except the sugar (flour, baking powder, soda, salt, nutmeg, cinnamon) together in a separate medium sized bowl. You may wish to sift this so they are combined consistently.
- Then, in a large mixing bowl, combine the puree', the butter or oil, and the sugar until it is entirely incorporated.
- Mix in the eggs, the vanilla, and the bourbon.
- Cup by cup, mix in the dry ingredients into the puree' mixture. Fold in until just mixed together.
- Pour the batter into 2-8" round cake pans, or 2- 9" bread pans, or 4-5" bread pans and bake until a toothpick can be inserted and comes out clean. (somewhere about 20-30 minutes depending on the size of your pan).
- FOR THE FROSTING:
- Using an electric mixer with the paddle attachment, beat the butter on medium speed until its all creamy.
- Add cream cheese and vanilla and bourbon, and beat until it's totally incorporated.
- Gradually increase the speed and beat until the cheese and butter mixture fluffy, scraping down the sides of bowl if you need to.
- Add in the powdered sugar one cup at a time, scraping down if you need to until everything is fully incorporated.
- PUTTING IT TOGETHER:
- Once the cake has cooled, frost it, slice it and serve it with a cup of coffee. it is even good at room temperature or straight from the fridge.
How perfect are persimmons? The gorgeous, peachy-oranged fleshed fruit that ripen into wrinkly, sweet pulp are not only the most lovely subjects for still life paintings ever, but also have been used in foods from puddings to beer for generations (read more about its history at American Food Roots). Until my friend Joseph brought me some that he’d found in the woods I’d never tried one and didn’t know that they’d played a large role in the diets of native people in our part of the world AND my southern ancestors. But now I know why.
When I saw the perfect little rosy “sugar plums” I couldn’t resist biting into one….but boy did I regret it. The skin of wild persimmons, dispyros virginiania (small, peachy fruit with smooth skin that’s a bit smaller than a golf ball and has several large, hard seeds) is VERY, VERY bitter and made my mouth feel like I’d covered it in a dry, awful tasting powder. But the inside flesh was soft, very sweet, and super fragrant.
In fact, when I just got a taste of the flesh I was in love. It was divine! And so different! Eventually I’d like to make a beer or vinegar using this lovely little fruit, but to start, I made something I felt pretty comfortable with… persimmon bread loosely based on James Beard’s version but with the added ah-mazingness that is cream cheese buttercream. I also made another batch and shaped it into a cake, which was brown like pumpernickle bread but was something like carrot cake. It really was PERFECT for breakfast, and super easy. If you’ve got folks staying over for Thanksgiving, then this is a nice change from the ubiquitous holiday sweet rolls for breakfast, especially since it makes use of local wild fruit you can find in the woods AND harkens back to the earliest settler’s food.
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