If a persimmon cookie and a piece of taffy had a love child, you’d get something close to persimmon candy. It’s a chewy, sweet, rich caramel. It’s a delicious gluten free treat and like nothing else you’ve had before!
This recipe works best with wild persimmons found in the Midwest. If you’re lucky enough to have a persimmon tree or know someone who does, pick the fruit after the first frost.
They’re best after they’ve just fallen off the tree (before the raccoons find them!) or just barely hanging on to their branch.
The fruits are small, squishy, and have large seeds. I’m not going to lie: extracting the pulp is a pain in the butt.
I’ve tried several methods. All (except one) have left me cursing up a blue storm. I’ve tried:
boiling them
pressing them through a colander
microwaving them (don’t do this, they explode)
mashing them through a fine sieve
putting them through a food mill
This past fall I finally decided to take a simple straight forward approach and it worked beautifully.
How to get the most pulp from your persimmons
I’m rolling my eyes at myself as I’m writing this, because I can’t believe I didn’t do this the first time. However, I was under the assumption that heat and pressure would be a far superior way to go. I was wrong. Try this with your next batch of persimmons:
Gently wash the fruit and remove the top leaves and stem.
Pry fruit open with your fingers and remove seeds.
Use remaining pulp and skin.
This only works with overly ripe super soft wild American persimmons, not the Japanese varieties found in the grocery store. That’s a bummer, but it’s also why persimmon candy and cookies are such a treat!
How to make persimmon candy
This recipe makes one 1 1/2 pound log of persimmon candy.
Put 2 cups sugar, 1 cup milk, and 1 tablespoon unsalted butter into a saucepan and bring to a boil.
Cook syrup until it reaches the soft ball stage* (240F). If you want a harder candy bring the temperature up to the hard ball stage 250-265F.
Add persimmon pulp (1/2 cup) and cook until temperature reaches 240F again.
Turn off heat and add vanilla (2 teaspoons), 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt, and 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon. Beat until mixture is slightly warm.
Spoon caramel into small silicone candy molds and refrigerate or freeze for 1/2 an hour.
How do I know my candy has reached the soft ball stage if I don’t have a thermometer?
Another way to know if your candy has reached 236F if you don’t have a thermometer, is to carefully take a piece of it and drop it into cold water. If it forms a soft ball when touched, you’re there!
Persimmon Candy Variations
Stir in a cup of chopped toasted pecans or walnuts at the very end before putting into candy molds.
Persimmon Cookie Recipe
Here’s my favorite persimmon cookie recipe I got from my friend, Deb H. who got it from her fiancé. It might be his mother’s or grandmother’s recipe. Either way, it’s pure persimmon bliss!
A special thank you to my friend, Amanda, for letting me raid her trees this year.
Amanda, her daughter Leah, and I climbed her golf cart and picked the last remaining persimmons on her trees. In return, I promised them a batch of persimmon candy and a batch of cookies.
4.5 from 4 votes
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Persimmon Candy
Rich, tangy, sweet with deep notes of cinnamon – this chewy candy is a treat made with wild persimmons found in the Midwest.
The fruits of Diospyros virginiana were used by the Cherokee, Comanche, Rappahannock, and Seminole for food and beverages. The fruits were dried like prunes for storage. Traditional medicinal uses ranged from treating sore throats and mouths, to indigestion, thrush, and bloody bowels.
The seeds and stem can be removed and the pulp strained through a strainer, pushing the pulp through with a rubber spatula. A food mill will make faster work of this if you have a large persimmon harvest. Or you can put the fruit with the peel in a blender or food processor and process until smooth.
The fruit is edible, but it is not ripe until the skin is wrinkled. Ripe persimmons are said to taste a great deal like dates. They are used to make cakes, puddings and beverages. Native Americans used the fruits to make bread, and also dried them.
Like many wild edible plants, wild persimmons are higher in nutrients than their cultivated counterparts. Just one tiny persimmon gives you 27% of the vitamin C you need for the day!
Persimmon folklore: If you split open a persimmon seed, you can examine the cotyledon, and depending on if it's shaped like a fork, spoon or knife, it can forecast the weather. A fork equals a mild winter. A spoon means get ready to shovel some snow. If you find a knife, winter will be cutting cold.
When persimmons are beaten to a pulp, tannins form complexes with carbohydrates, causing the pulp to stiffen to a gel-like consistency. When baking soda is added, a reaction with the moist and slightly acidic persimmon creates carbon dioxide (CO2), which also plays a role in encouraging the pulp to thicken.
How to Eat Raw Persimmons. For a sweet (Fuyu) persimmon, you should use them when they're still quite firm. Start by rinsing the fruit, removing the leaves, and slicing it like you would an apple into your desired shape. The peel is edible — so take a bite!
Many recipe books suggest making a persimmon bread similar to a banana bread, or a cooked persimmon pudding. You can try these if you like, but we encourage you to experiment first with raw preparations that showcase the lovely uniqueness of these autumn treasures.
Depending on the persimmon variety, flowers can take up to five years to emerge. It takes even longer for trees to bear fruit, often up to 10 years for American Persimmon trees.
When fully ripe, American persimmon is very sweet with a soft grainy texture similar to fresh dates. But instead of a date flavor, it has a delicious persimmon flavor. The fruits are round, sized between one and two inches diameter, with one or more seeds in the middle. The seeds are large, and resemble pumpkin seeds.
Common persimmon is found from southern Connecticut and Long Island to southern Florida; westward through central Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, and central Illinois to southeast Iowa; and south through eastern Kansas and Oklahoma to the Valley of the Colorado River in Texas.
The Persimmon tree is a native tree found in the southeast United States whose tasty, seeded fruit was extensively used by Native Americans and people today.
The common persimmon is rarely grown as a food or ornamental plant. One reason for is that it is extremely slow growing. It takes four to eight years for a tree to bloom for the first time. Then the tree often won't begin producing fruit for another three years.
Persimmon (Diospyros kaki L.) leaves, known as Shi Ye (in Chinese), have a long history as a Chinese traditional medicine for the treatment of ischemia stroke, angina, internal hemorrhage, hypertension, atherosclerosis and some infectious diseases, etc.
Persimmons are consumed fresh and are used to make puddings, cakes, and beverages. American Indians made persimmon bread and stored the dried fruit like prunes. Foxes, opossums, raccoons, skunks, deer, and birds also feed on the fruit.
Persimmons are a good source of vitamins A and C as well as manganese, which helps the blood to clot. They also have other antioxidants, which help reduce the risk of many serious health conditions including cancer and stroke. One serving of persimmons contains approximately: Calories: 118.
Roasted and ground persimmon seeds were a substitute for coffee during the scarcities of the Civil War. In the Buddhist religion, persimmons are a symbol of transformation. In China, they are an auspicious gift to newlyweds to celebrate eternal love.
Introduction: My name is Chrissy Homenick, I am a tender, funny, determined, tender, glorious, fancy, enthusiastic person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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