Persimmons!

I told you guys about the persimmons that I had received in my bountiful basket last week.   When we got them, they were totally soft.  You broke the skin and it was complete puree!  We were told that they should be that way, and they certainly weren't rotten, but they were definitely too messy to eat as a fruit, so I went on pinterest and did a little digging.

The first recipe I came across that sounded pretty good was this persimmon cookie with orange glaze.  I whipped up a bowl of the cookie mix, but I did not feel like making the glaze, so I popped open a tub of cream cheese frosting instead, and it did the trick. ;)  Not my most favorite cookies ever, but still pretty good for trying to use up an item you've never eaten before and did not even know if you liked!  Sorry folks, I didn't snap a pic of these.

I thought that I was only going to need to come up with one recipe, since I only had 4 little persimmons, but alas, my cookies only used up 2 of them, so back to pinterest I went.  This time I found bread.

This persimmon cranberry bread recipe to be precise.  The recipe called for dried cranberries, but I had some fresh ones left over from Thanksgiving that I needed to use up, so I thought it would be a win-win.

I only had two persimmons remaining, so since this recipe made two loaves, I halved it and only made one loaf.  I still found myself a little bit short on persimmon pulp, so I added an applesauce cup to equal out the amount of puree I needed.   (I often substitute this for an egg in my banana bread as well.  Makes it very moist, and lets me leave out a bit of the sugar in the recipe).

Here's the loaf fresh out the oven.

Here's a slice all nice and buttered up.  =)

I thought the bread came out very good.  My girls did not like the fresh cranberries in there and picked them out.  I honestly probably could have used less, even up to half of what I added (I sort of did the sprinkle until it looked about right method).   There were quite a few per slice, and they were pretty tart!  But all in all, not a bad recipe.

I have 9 more smaller persimmons this week (they seem to be a different variety, and much firmer!), so I'm thinking of attempting this bread one more time, and using a bag of chocolate covered raisins I got marked down for $0.79 at Aldi instead of the cranberries.  Chocolate makes everything better, right?  Sounds like a pretty delicious substitution to me!