Snapshot of a Persimmon pudding made for my father-in-law's 81st birthday.
My grandmother, Clara, was the first of many to teach me how to cook. She taught me how to make homemade buttermilk biscuits, Christmas ham and many other delicious comfort foods from the Southern US. She made this recipe on Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Every fall, she would gather Persimmons from her tree outside, wash and then pulp the Persimmons. She would then spend several hours processing the fruit using a food mill or sieve with a wooden tool to mash the pulp through the sieve. She would then pre-measure into 2 cup ziploc bags, placing them in the freezer, in preparation for this recipe.
The fruit used in this recipe is not the Oriental Persimmons you find in the grocery store. I believe it’s the American Persimmon variety. Persimmonpudding.com has a variety of resources listed to find the necessary Persimmon pulp.
The key to this recipe is the mix of flour and liquid. When it’s correct, the result is a wonderful dessert with the consistency of a traditional pudding cake (not really cake and not really pudding). Too much flour creates a cake and too little creates a watery pudding, neither of which is very appealing.