Persimmon Candy | Easy Recipe for the Wild American Fruit (2024)
by Madalaine11 Comments
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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.
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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 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 persimmon fruit, which usually ripens in fall, is often used in jams and baked goods. The fruit pulp can be turned into molasses, and the seeds can be turned into a peanut-like oil or roasted and used as a coffee substitute. Dried leaves make a great tea high in vitamin C.
They usually have several large seeds, so they are best eaten out-of-doors, just spit the seeds out as you go. The best way to harvest American persimmons is to find a wild tree and check on it every fall for free fruit. Gather the fruit as it falls. Trees will usually drop fruit continuously for 3-6 weeks.
How many persimmons can you eat a day? A. It is better not to eat more than one persimmon or 100 g of fruit in a day. Excessive consumption of persimmons may lead to intestinal blockages, nausea, vomiting, or constipation.
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.
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.
Both Native Americans and European settlers on this continent ate the fruits of the native Diospyros virginiana, until Japanese immigrants introduced Americans to Asian persimmons (also known as kaki fruits).
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.
Dairy: Consuming dairy products like milk, yogurt, or cheese immediately before or after eating persimmons may lead to digestive issues for some people. This is because persimmons are acidic and can curdle milk, potentially causing stomach discomfort. To avoid this, consider spacing out the consumption of dairy.
Persimmons also contained more of the major phenolics (antioxidants) than apples. Persimmons had significantly higher levels of sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, iron and manganese. Apples had higher overall concentrations of copper and zinc.
The fruit is easily chewable and has a delicious flavour, but it is not recommended for diabetics, obese and sufferers of gastroduodenal ulcer. Persimmons have a creamy and sweet pulp and have laxative, diuretic and hepatoprotective.
American persimmons are not usually self-pollinating, but some named varieties are. If you choose a native seedling however, you will need a second tree to get a good harvest. Also, Japanese and American persimmons will not cross pollinate.
Your dehydrator booklet will tell you the ideal temperature for the specific thing that you are dehydrating. For persimmons, I put them on 135 degrees and they will dry for 7-11 hours. I know that seems like a long time, but just think of it like it's a slow cooker. When you get back from school or work, it's done!
Wash the persimmons well. Cut them into thin even slices – about 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick. I used the 3/16" or 4.5mm setting on my mandolin slicer. In a food dehydrator, dry the persimmons on 135°F (medium heat or fruit setting) for approximately 7 to 8 hours.
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