Persimmon Cookies

It's not a pie, but it's worth sharing. This recipe came to me from my mother, who got it from my grandmother, who loved persimmons. She would keep them in the freezer and eat them with a spoon.

But I don't remember ever eating these cookies before this week. They are really good. Basically, they're light and moist spice cookies. If you didn't know there was fruit in them, you might not notice.

The recipe calls for nuts and raisins and maybe chocolate chips. I don't like nuts and raisins in my cookies, so I just left them out. It worked out fine for me, but I'm sure they would be good with everything in them too.

Persimmon Cookies

1 cup persimmon pulp*
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup Crisco (but I used butter)
1 cup sugar
1 egg
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup nuts (optional)
1 cup raisins (optional)
1 cup chocolate chips (optional)

Mix persimmon and baking soda, set aside. Cream shortening and sugar. Put egg into pulp mixture and add after dry ingredients. Make teaspoon sized drops on greased cookie sheet and bake at 375 degrees F until lightly browned, about 10 minutes.

*To make 1 cup persimmon pulp, I used six persimmons. I washed them and cut off the leaf-like tops. One cookbook I have says to put them through a food mill, but I don't have a food mill. So here's what I did. For the really ripe ones, I just split the skins and squeezed out the insides into a sieve over a bowl. I used a spoon to push it through the sieve. For the less than squishy ones, I peeled them, then took all the flesh (and any big chunks from the fully/over ripe ones) and chopped it really fine, 1/8" dice, and added it to the pulp. It worked out fine.