Cookies and Candids

I know, I know, I promised more holiday cookie recipes, but this sweet and spicy cake I made on Saturday was so good, I have to share it with you first! In the next few days I pinky-swear to post pictures and recipes for holiday cookies, so don’t fear! Keep checking back 🙂

The Fuyu persimmons are a non-astringent variety of persimmon (it won’t dry out your mouth, I promise). They are flat, and not pointy like the other type. You want to eat them while they are still firm and crunchy like an apple, and you can eat them peeled or unpeeled. They are very sweet. I love them! It was a good thing we had so many of them growing on our tree outside, although when I made this cake I doubled the recipe and used up every single persimmon we had left! I’m already looking forward to next year’s persimmon tree harvest so much! Previously I posted a recipe to make Dried Persimmons and for Persimmon Granola, and typically the only recipes I’ve found elsewhere for using Fuyus in are for salads, salsas and chutneys. A few years ago, I blended some of the Fuyus up and put them in cookies, and they tasted sweet and very autumn-like, especially because of their beautiful orange color. So, I thought, why not put them into cake? My mom found this recipe online, and it’s originally from an old Sunset Magazine. I’ve adapted it a bit, to make it vegan and a little spicier.

This cake has a near-gingerbread taste, although it has no ginger in it to speak of…Although, it does have a lot of other spices! The cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and cardamom really give this cake a wonderfully spicy holiday touch, which was perfect because I brought it to a Christmas party this past Saturday. (Can I just say, I had two Christmas parties to attend on Saturday, and I heard about a few others that were being held at the same time – Hello people, it was only December 12^th, two weeks before Christmas! And it was the second night of Hanukah! Goodness, Christio-normative world!). But I say all this with a grin and an eye-roll directed purely at myself, because I actually really do enjoy Christmas celebrations, especially ones like the cozy, warm, beautiful, and delicious party thrown this weekend by one of my colleagues. And I have many more to look forward to in the coming weeks, which makes me wish I had more persimmons to bake with!

Because of the persimmon’s brilliant orange color, the cake had a deep reddish-orange hue:

Fuyu Persimmon Cake Ingredients:

3 firm Fuyu persimmons peeled and chopped (3 cups)
2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 cup Earth Balance, softened
1 2/3 cups sugar
2 eggs-worth of egg replacer (I used Ener-G, but I think it would also work to substitute cornstarch mixed with water, or ground flax seeds)
3 tsp. lemon juice
2 tsp. pure vanilla
2 cups flour (I used 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour and 3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour)
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. ground cloves
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp. ground cardamom

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a bundt cake pan.
Blend your persimmons till smooth. Add baking soda and blend till well combined, and then set aside while you mix the other ingredients together.
In a large bowl, beat the Earth Balance with the sugar. Add your egg replacer, lemon juice, and vanilla and beat until fluffy.
Stir in the fuyu mix (it should be much firmer than before, more like a jello-consistency).
Sift together flour, baking powder, ground cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cardamom. Fold the dry mix into the wet.
Pour (or spoon, because the batter is thick) into prepared bundt pan. Bake for 55-60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake tests clean.
Wait until the cake is cooled to invert and take it out of the pan. Dust with powdered sugar or drizzle with an orange glaze.