I was going through some old recipes and found one a friend sent me several years ago—it’s for persimmon bread. Sadly, my friend Mario is no longer with us. It’s funny to find a recipe like this and realize that I’ve never made it—until now. I’d forgotten that he’d given it to me. But now is as good a time as any to make it, especially since the persimmons are now in season.
I love and miss Mario—he was a Facebook friend, one I actually got to meet once, along with a bunch of other Facebook friends. We all went to lunch at a Chinese restaurant when I was visiting San Francisco back in 2017.
Eleven years ago this month, Mario and I started a Facebook group together, mainly because we both loved black & white photography. He reluctantly became my partner in running the group—but he had wonderful photos from a lifetime of traveling, and relented, mainly because I told him I would do most of the work. Mario even let me borrow his infrared-converted camera for a while because Hawai’i is so green, and black & white infrared images really sing when there is a lot of foliage (which Hawai’i has), making it look like white as snow. I had a blast using that camera. Sadly, once he passed, the group wasn’t the same for me.
Mario was a lot of fun—he loved good food, good friends, and he could grow passionfruit in his backyard in the Mission. He loved to share it, and he even managed to share some with me.
Sadly, it’s been five years since Mario passed, and the best thing I can do now is honor him by making his recipe.
I’ve never cooked with persimmons before, and I didn’t grow up eating them. So this is a new one for me. I did adapt this recipe to my own tastes—cut the sugar from 1 cup to ¾ cup, and then used ¼ cup of coconut sugar in place of some of the white sugar.
I didn’t have cloves, so I subbed cardamom and added some ginger instead. You can use any kind of nuts. I had walnuts and pecans, so I used half a cup of each.
This bread is delicious! Thinking of you from the great beyond, my friend.
Mario’s Persimmon Bread (Mostly)
Ingredients
- ¾ cup sugar
- ¼ cup butter + more for greasing
- 1 egg
- 1 cup very ripe persimmon pulp
- 2 tsp baking soda
- ½ tsp salt
- 1-½ cups flour
- Zest of 1 lemon, grated
- Juice of 1 lemon
- ½ tsp ground cloves
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- ½ cup raisins
- ½ cup walnuts
Preheat oven to 350º F.
Prepare a loaf pan by greasing it with butter.
In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, cloves, salt, and cinnamon. Set aside.
Cream butter and sugar together in a large bowl. Add the egg and beat until incorporated. Then add the persimmon pulp, lemon juice, and zest and mix until just combined.
Fold in the raisins and walnuts; pour into the prepared pan. Bake for 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
Makes about 10 servings.
