Spicy Persimmon Muffins

We bought a persimmon tree many years ago and it didn't fruit for the first eight years. The lady who sold it to us came with her father and they grafted a couple of branches from a fruiting tree on it to see if that would help. It felt like the poor tree was doomed as our son was staying for a few months and he had one of his pet goats with him at the time. Said goat quite liked the new grafting's.

Said friend came back again after our son moved on and tried another graft and between them all, something happened to the tree. The first year there were three fruit that survived to be eaten but the second year it bore a heavy crop. The next was poor but this year, there were bucket loads. 

So what to do?

I made jam, stewed some for having with muesli for breakfast and decided to attempt making some muffins. At first I tried a recipe I found through google but they were a bit bland. Using the recipe as a tried to tweak it a bit and after a couple of attempts that still didn't pack much punch I created this one.

Ingredients

1 ¾ Cups Flour 

2 tsp Baking Powder 

1 tsp Ground Ginger 

2 tsp Cinnamon 

½ tsp Nutmeg 

½ Cup Sugar 

1 Cup Persimmon Pulp 

100gr Butter 

1 Egg 

½ - 1 Cup Milk 

Preparation 

Grease a 12-hole muffin tray (or line with muffin cases if preferred) and preheat the oven to 210°C.

Combine the first six dry ingredients in a large bowl, and toss well together.

Measure out the pulp from ripe persimmons cutting firm flesh into pea size pieces. (I actually used over ripe persimmons so it was just a matter of slitting the base of the fruit and squeezing out the pulp). 

Melt the butter until just liquid, whisk in the egg, stir in the persimmon and add ½ cup of the milk. 

Fold the wet ingredients into the dry adding more milk if the consistency is too dry after 8 folds. (I don’t fold more than 14 times as muffins should not be over mixed and it is fine if there are still traces of dry flour) 

Fill the muffin tins to almost fill and place in the oven on a high shelf to bake at 210°C for 12 to 15 minutes. They should bounce back when lightly pressed and be slightly crisp on the top. 

Cool for 10 minutes before removing from the tins, then cool on a wire cooling rack.

You may want to vary the spices to your liking using more or less but I liked this balance.

I usually eat my muffins unbuttered but I found they needed a bit of a buttery taste while nice and warm!