Persimmon Cornbread

In January, the last hachiya persimmon of the season ripened after a storage battle; I was trying to keep it cool and dry for as long as possible without dehydrating it. Like humans, you can’t keep the hachiya from aging but at least in the case of fruits you may be able to delay it. Hachiyas are unpredictable, sometimes they ripen and soften to their sweet jelly consistency without a problem, sometimes they deceive the eater into thinking they’re ready when all that is offered is a solid and bitter center, and fairly often the hachiya will bruise before becoming edible making it slightly less appealing. Think of a banana browning, it’s not the worst but it’s not the ideal way to eat a banana. Most of the time, a brown banana gets converted into banana bread.

Anyone who has made banana bread knows that everyone has their own recipe and anyone who has made cornbread knows the same. So, what happens when you mix your corn bread recipe with your banabread recipe but instead of banana the moisture and sweetness is replaced by fresh hachiya jelly? You get hachiya cornbread!

I love making this and then freezing the left overs for sweet stuffing in March, when persimmons have been out of season for awhile but I am craving a taste of autumn. When I was a kid, we had a 100 year old hachiya tree in the backyard that was taller than our house. The harvest was enough for us, all of our neighbors, and all of the neighborhood squirrels! As an adult, I now crave persimmons October through December. Actually, I crave them all of the time! Sadly they are very temperamental and like my other seasonal favorite, satsuma mikan, they are only around for 2-3 months a year. Baking persimmons into rustic cornbread is one of the many good way to preserve that flavor for a later date.

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