Persimmon Breakfast Cake: A tasty cake-like bread along the same lines as banana bread. Inspired by a sudden abundance of Persimmons on our tree, which has suddenly decided to produce fruit!
I have never baked with persimmons, but I will experiment more next Autumn. To date, we have grilled them with chevre cheese and Parma ham on toast, diced them into a fruity green salad and made a ginger, persimmon and beetroot salad.
This is a very easy recipe: Sift the dry ingredients, stir in the wet, and add the nuts and raisins. Bake for an hour.
Persimmons come in many varieties, but the Hachiya and Fuyu varieties are the most commercial. The Hachiya Persimmon must be fully ripe, or it has too much of a strong tannin/astringent taste. When ripe, the Hachiya Persimmon have an exceptionally soft texture, which is perfect for baking. The fruit is commonly found in Asia but is now grown across Europe and America. Hence, my persimmon tree here in the garden in Greece. In Japan, Hachiyas are used to make the popular sweet hoshigaki. The ripe fruits are peeled and then hung from a pole. The fruit is then gently massaged daily until its juices and sugars coat the exterior. It sounds delicious but very labour-intensive!
I used the Fuyu fruit for this recipe because my tree is a Fuyu persimmon tree. They were very ripe and worked well.😁 In the same way you use overripe bananas, you use very ripe persimmons for this recipe. Ideally, use organic fruit, and then you can puree the whole thing without peeling it.
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Persimmon Breakfast Cake
Equipment
- 1 loaf pan, lined with greaseproof paper
Ingredients
- 220 g all-purpose flour or white spelt flour
- ½ tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ⅔ tsp salt
- 1 tsp orange zest
- ½ tsp each of cinnamon
- pinch ground nutmeg
- 1 tsp ginger
- 200 g sugar
- 110 g soft butter
- 2 large lightly beaten at room temperature
- 80 ml freshly squeezed orange juice
- 250 ml persimmon puree (approx 2 fruits) Halve and remove any seeds, then pulse in the blender until smooth
- 100 g lightly crushed walnuts or almonds
- 120 g dried fruit; raisins, finely chopped apricots or dates dusted with flour
Instructions
- Pre-heat the oven to 180 °C
- Melt the butter with the cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger and leave it to cool.
- Sieve the dry ingredients and whisk in the orange zest. Sieving is important to ensure the baking powder and soda are evenly distributed.
- Whisk the butter with the eggs and persimmon puree.
- Make a well in the dry ingredients, stir in the egg mixture, and then add the orange juice. Fold in the nuts and raisins.
- Bake on the middle shelf for an hour. Check on it at about 40 minutes and cover with foil if it is browning too quickly. Ready when a knife comes out clean.
- Let it cool for 5 minutes in the pan, and then lift the cake out with the grease-proof paper to cool completely. Serve as is or toasted and buttered for breakfast or as a cake with tea!
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