persimmon pancakes

At the start of autumn, my mom brought home a giant bag filled to the brim with unripe persimmons. We stood each fruit on our kitchen counter and each of the twenty or so persimmons inhabited its own chunk of space. They took up half our kitchen counter, resembling a miniature garden of vibrant orange blossoms.

Sadly they all kind of just stood there for weeks on weeks end--untouched, unused, still inedible. I felt bad that these persimmons weren't getting any love, but firm persimmons don't really float my boat. I grew up eating extremely ripe persimmons--as in the sweetest and juiciest of its kind; the kind that smushed at the slightest touch of the fingertips, melted in your mouth; the kind that required little to no chewing, mostly gulping--so I refused to touch them even though they did indeed ripen (but only barely). After three long months--after the entire fall season--of waiting, the persimmons have finally ripened...near the end of December.

I'm not too fond of firm persimmons, but I think that's the stage when they're ordinarily consumed. First off, they're hard to peel. When the persimmons are still firm, the skin is still intact with the meat of the fruit, so peeling's a chore. Plus I suck at carving the skin off of any fruit with a knife without chopping off 99% of the actual fruity insides (exaggeration, more like 74% but that's still a lot), so it's more misfortune for me. I mean, they still taste good, but just not as appealing to me as the softened persimmons.

Extremely ripened persimmons, on the other hand, I love. The skin falls off the fruit like a charm, and it's such a juicy and healthy treat to sink your teeth in. With minimal chewing of the carpels and fibrous meat, the fruit dissolves on your palate like sweet magic. 


I can continue on and on about my opinions of persimmons, but onto these pancakes. So with an extremely ripe persimmon, I made persimmon pancakes! You get chewy fruit bits here and there, and since the persimmon is at its ripest, it is also at its sweetest--an all-natural sweetener for the batter. You can replace the persimmon with about 1/3 of a cup of sweet potato or pumpkin/kabocha puree if your kitchen counter isn't half-taken over by these orange fruits. I think that's what I really love about fall flavors: the basic spices of cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger possess the same rustic zest in whatever you whip up, so the staple fall fruits, vegetables, and squashes are very much interchangeable!

Oh and if you have any leftover pumpkin butter from before, I suggest spreading it on top of these pancakes. When I said pumpkin butter tastes good with almost anything, these pancakes are definitely on the list.

Persimmon Pancakes

yields 1 serving

Ingredients:
  
1 ripe persimmon
2 tbs coconut flour
1 tsp ground flaxseed
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground ginger (I finally bought some!)
1 egg
2 tsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
splash of almond milk

Directions:

- In a small bowl, mash up the ripe persimmon and add in the egg, brown sugar, and vanilla extract and mix until incorporated.
- Add in the coconut flour, ground flaxseed, baking powder, baking soda, and spices and continue to mix. Add in a splash of almond milk or more if your mixture is grainy or too dry.
- Heat a pan at medium-low and spray the surface with nonstick cooking spray. Once the pan has heated, scoop the pancake batter into the pan and using the back of your spoon, spread and smooth it out. You should get about three small pancakes.
- Take your time and let your pancakes slowly cook through. Even if your batter starts to bubble, wait a little bit longer until further cooked through on one side so it won't fall apart while flipping, but not too long that it starts to burn.
- Flip the pancakes and continue to cook the other side on low heat. Once they're cooked through, remove and serve!