We regard this entrée as an “event entrée.” Yes, it’s a breakfast meal, but we prefer it as a Sunday dinner.
Ingredients
- 1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup whole-wheat flour
- 3 tablespoons sugar
- 2 tablespoons black walnuts, regular walnuts, or other nuts
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1-3/4 cups milk
- 1 tablespoon oil
- 2 large eggs
- 1/2 cup persimmon pulp
Directions
- Combine all the ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Allow the mixture to rest about 5 minutes while the waffle iron preheats.
- Use 1/2 cup batter at a time and cook until golden, or according to the directions on your waffle iron.
Diospyros virginiana, better known as the common persimmon, is by far our favorite fall fruit. Persimmon bread with black walnuts, persimmon pie with vanilla ice cream, and persimmon pancakes with maple syrup – well, those are truly some of the finer things in life. D. virginiana occurs from Connecticut to Florida, west to Kansas and Iowa, and south to Texas, while D. texana appears in Texas and Mexico. The pingpong-sized orange fruit imparts a sweet stickiness when ripe – and a puckering, cotton-like, mouth-clogging glob when not. The brown or black bark with its small, square plates (similar to the skin of an alligator) are diagnostic, as are the yellow, pointed elliptical leaves come autumn.
Whether persimmon trees are growing in a woodlot, a stream bottom, a field, or along a fence, they have to receive full sunlight to produce a full crop of their soft mast. That’s why I had Huffman come to our land to daylight (prune to maximize sunlight) a 15-year-old persimmon tree that had never formed fruit. A large red cedar shaded it on one side, and an autumn-olive thicket competed for its resources on the other.
More fall foraged fruit recipes:
Bruce and Elaine Ingram are the authors of Living the Locavore Lifestyle, a book covering how to fish, hunt, and gather for food. For more information, contact them at BruceIngramOutdoors@Gmail.com.
Originally published in the August/September 2025 issue of MOTHER EARTH NEWS and regularly vetted for accuracy.
