We love food made with persimmons. If you’ve never tasted a persimmon, it has a unique flavor but it goes well with recipes calling for pumpkin puree.

We’ve started harvesting our 2013 persimmons, so it was time to finish the 2012 persimmon pulp we had frozen and hoarded. We had quite a bit of it, so Emery decided to experiment with 3 new recipes we’ve been working with.

The first one was persimmon bars and they were amazing. He also made persimmon bread which was also incredibly good and persimmon cookies.  The cookie recipe still needs work as they were dry.

Emery got all his ingredients out and studied the recipe I put on my iPad for him.

He added the ingredients to the mixer*, starting with the persimmon pulp.

Then he started it mixing.

He added the rest of the ingredients and scraped down the sides of the mixer.

And poured it into the pan.

Then he put it in the oven to bake.  Now normally I would show you a photo of the finished product.  But that would require me having a photo of the finished product.  

If I had been taking the photos, there would be one.  But in the spirit of my Youngest Person Rule, all of these photos were taken by Hewitt.

Hewitt has a lot to learn about taking photographs, but they’re not too bad for his first attempt.  I think he got bored before he got to the finished product.  Afterall, when I got the photos off the SD card, Hewitt had taken 1308 photos of Emery baking!!!

I would have taken some photos of them myself, but the persimmon bars were so good that we ate them all before I realized there weren’t any photos of them.

I guess that just means that we’ll need to make them again!

Bar Recipe

In a mixer or bowl, combine
2 cups persimmon pulp
2 eggs
2 cups sugar 
1 cup olive oil
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp nutmeg
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cloves
2 tsp baking soda
2 cups golden raisins (optional – can also use craisins)
2 cups chopped nuts (optional – we prefer pecans, can use walnuts)

Mix together.

Add 3 cups flour (we prefer soft wheat flour)

Mix together and pour into a greased pan. We use a 9×13 pan because we like them thick, but you can use different sized pans depending on how thick you want them.

Bake at 350 (325 convection) until a knife inserted comes out clean (20-30 minutes depending on the size of the pan you use).

Once the bars are out, you have to decide whether or not you are going to glaze them. For us, this is a no-brainer as we think the glaze is the best part.

You can use straight honey or you can mix up your own glaze.

Glaze Recipe

2 cup confectioner sugar
1/4 cup liquid (we use lemon extract, can also use lemon juice or water)

Mix together well then pour over cooked bars. (That’s a lot of icing, so you can reduce as you see fit.)

This was a really wonderful recipe that would probably work very well with canned pumpkin if you don’t have any access to persimmons.  If you try it with pumpkin, let me know how it turns out!

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