This is a perfectly delicious recipe for persimmon pudding cake with a modern twist of adding saffron. Saffron is not a spice I grew up with, but soon after trying it initially in paella, it was my new comfort food flavor. There is something about saffron that I cannot resist. I find it so comforting and wonderful. I ran across a recipe for persimmon pudding with Saffron in the New York Times, and thought what a wonderful idea, to combine the perfect fall fruit, and saffron. I adapted the recipe to my own taste, and the result was the perfect dessert, revamped.

This was the only thing I had the opportunity to photograph from our Thanksgiving feast. We had a Steel Reserve Beer can turkey with an ancho chili rub. It was so moist, I told my hubby it was soggy, but in a good way. I let it rest on the beer can after roasting for about 2 hours, and when I removed it from the beer can, the cavity of the bird was still steamy. I made a white cornbread the day before for the dressing. That day I made a turkey stock from the neck and giblets and some fresh herbs. I added onions, celery, red and green peppers, and garlic, along with the turkey stock and crumbled white cornbread to make the dressing. I added a smoke bone to a big pot of collards for one of my favorite dishes. I thinly sliced my sweet potatoes and added to a baking dish with cream, bourbon, and nutmeg for a more sophisticated sweet potato casserole. I also made a corn casserole with three varieties of corn that was so delicious. I also did the classic green bean casserole, but instead of the cream of yucky soup, I made a béchamell sauce and added caramelized onions, bacon, and a little worcestershire. I topped it with Panko bread crumbs. I actually forgot the cranberry sauce, but made it the next day easily with 1 cup orange juice, 1 cup sugar, and a package of fresh cranberries. I made Alton Brown’s apple pie spiced with caraway seeds that was heavenly with vanilla ice cream for dessert, complete with the cute little black bird. We enjoyed lots of great wine, and enjoyed our feast all weekend. After dinner on Thursday, we went to the central Florida auto show, where we were able to walk off a few calories and drool over some beautiful new cars.

Persimmon Pudding Cake with Saffron Recipe

Ingredients

• 3 cups persimmon pulp
• 4 eggs
• 2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 15-20 strands saffron
• 2 sticks butter

Method

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Peel and seed persimmons, and mash them up a little more if needed. Add pulp to a large bowl. Add sugar, eggs, milk and melted butter.
2. Sift flour, baking soda, baking powder, ginger and nutmeg together. Whisk the flour mixture into the persimmon mixture. Add saffron, and whisk until mixture is just combined.
3. Pour into a greased 9×13 baking dish. Bake until dark brown, and cake passes the toothpick test, about 40-50 minutes.

Tags: persimmons, saffron

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 at 5:27 pm and is filed under Dessert. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.