Persimmon Pudding

Fall is my favorite season here at Heritage Oak. The mornings are cool and crisp. As the sun rises, I frequently see a light fog sitting over the vineyards. It rained a little last month and now the native grasses have sprouted. Everywhere the ground is green again. It is good to be out from under the blanket of summer heat.

It is already mid-November but the afternoons are still sunny and warm. It’s as if the days don’t want to let summer go. We spend time getting equipment ready for storage, making repairs. This is also a great time to work with the soil. It is slightly moist from the early rains, but also loose and warm. We dig bulbs in the garden around the patio- tulips, iris, daffodils- and spread them into places they have never been. They will wake up in February and shout their color from an new vantage point.

The vines don’t agree with my pollyana outlook. The poor things are exhausted; leaves mottled, bronzed and dysfunctional from a loss of chlorophyll. Their burden of fruit is gone, but harvest left them battered. They look like they want to be left alone to rest.

And rest they will soon get. With the first heavy frosts of late fall and early winter, they will drop into deep slumber, shedding their leaves with the wind and rain. Then, with winter’s cold fully upon us and the vines dormant, we will enter the fields to prune canes and shape the coming year’s crop.

The wines have been made and have begun their metamorphosis: a transition where they begin as little else than fruit juice with alcohol in September to emerge in May as adolescent wines, full of hope and promise. During their sleep, I interrupt their solitude with racking and blending, and periodic micro-doses of potassium metabisulfite. They would like me to leave them alone, but I never do.

With the red wines resting in barrels, the white wines now become my focus. They must be stabilized for heat and cold and filtered for clarity, all the while protecting their fragile hue from oxygen, the dreaded beast.

This time of year, the bright spot in the landscape at Heritage Oak are the persimmon trees. We have two of them behind the winery belonging to the Japanese cultivar hachiya. Their leaves have begun to drop, revealing an abundant crop of fat, orange lobes. Shaped like apples with points, they hang from the branches on short, thick woody stem. With the coolness of fall, they magically ripen and their flesh turns from hard and un-giving to supple, soft, sweet, almost gelatinous. But it is the color and texture of the skin that is most amazing: deep orange with twinges of red, smooth and shiny. There is nothing like them. Nothing in the fall beats the jubilance of a persimmon tree full of fruit.

As they ripen, the birds find them. Flocks of cedar waxwings come through devouring the sweet pulp. We pick them too. People come into the tasting room and see the persimmon trees out back and ask what they are. They go home with persimmons in a bag and recipes in their pockets. Food is always a great thing to share.

Cooking with persimmons is a tradition in my family. My Grandmother Hoffman had a tree in her yard and each year she would make persimmon cookies and persimmon bread. My favorite though has always been persimmon pudding. For me, it is just as important to Thanksgiving dinner as a turkey. Especially when it has a dollop of hard sauce on it.

Persimmons are amazing because, after they have turned color,  you can pick them any time you want and keep them forever! It is the only fruit that you completely control when it ripens; something you do by simply putting it in the freezer. When you want to use the persimmon to bake something, you just take it out to thaw. The freezing/thawing process takes it from not-quite-ready-to-go to perfectly ripe. I’ve never understood exactly why this is, but the good news is that you can keep them in your freezer as long as you want. Persimmon pudding for Easter is a great concept!

Here is my grandmother’s recipe. If you are interested, we still have persimmons on the tree. Stop by. I’ll loan you my clippers.

Grandma Hoffman’s Persimmon Pudding

 1 cup granulated sugar

2 tablespoons melted butter

1 large egg, well beaten

1 cup flour

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 cup milk

1 cup sieved persimmon pulp

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

½ cup chopped walnuts

½ cup raisins

In a bowl, beat the sugar and melted butter into the beaten eggs. Sift together the flour, cinnamon, salt, baking powder and baking soda. Blend into the sugar and egg mixture, and then blend in the milk and persimmon pulp. Stir in the nuts and raisins. Pour the batter into a lightly greased mold or covered dish placed in a pan of hot water to about half the depth of the pudding mold. Bake at 350 degrees F. for approximately 1 hour until it tests done with a straw or knife.

Serve warm with Hot Lemon Sauce, Brandy Sauce, Hard Sauce or whipped cream. The pudding can be prepared several days ahead and reheated lightly covered.

For another recipe and lots of photos visit “Persimmon Murder“.