Persimmon Pudding Purdue Persimmon Pudding Recipe, a Bottorff favorite

1/2 C sugar
1     egg
1  C  persimmon pulp
3/4 C graham cracker crumbs
3/4 C flour
3  T  cream or evaporated milk
1  t  vanilla
1/4 t salt
1/2 t soda

Mix all ingredients and pour into 9x9 baking pan.
Bake at 325 to 350 for about 30 minutes.  Cut into squares when cool.

Variations:
Mom reduced the graham crackers and the flour to 1/2 C each for a moister product.
Aunt Nora added 1 t baking powder and 2 T more flour to keep it from falling.

This is a persimmon recipe unlike any other I have found on the WWW.  We called it Persimmon Pudding, but it has the consistency of a moist brownie, so perhaps it should be called Persimmon cake or brownie. We always made this with ripe Southern Indiana persimmons picked up from our yard.  For every perfect if somewhat squashed persimmon there were 10 others that we had to step through.  Consequently we had to clean our shoes before re-entering the house.  The persimmons were cleaned by hand of grass and leaves and put through a colander to separate the pulp from the seeds and skins.  The resulting bright orange pulp can be frozen for several months.

We lived in Japan and are familiar with oriental persimmons.  I haven't tried them, but I expect that oriental persimmons are too mild flavored for this recipe compared with the American variety.

BTW: Check out http://www.duke.edu/~mss4/persimmon.html