American Persimmon Dumplings

Authored by Jodi Roth, Silver Creek Nursery

This recipe was loosely based on an Austrian Apricot Dumpling recipe. I chose it because I wanted to find a way to showcase the flavour of American Persimmons a bit more, instead of losing it in a baking recipe that is packed with holiday spices such as cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and cardamom. However, I can say there is definitely something to peoples' typical choice to use American Persimmons with strong spices because the flavour is a very mild fruit with lots of mouth-drying tannins when eaten on its own.  Working with American Persimmons is also more labour intensive to process them and get the large seeds out, so beware of that before you start! 

Ingredients & Method

For the Dough:

• 250g (about 1 cup) pressed cottage cheese (I used M&C Dairy brand, from the Little Green Grocery in Stratford, ON. The original recipe called for farmer’s cheese (Topfen) or Quark that has been drained overnight)
• 1 large egg
• 45g (3.75 TBSP) wheat semolina (also called wheat farina or cream of wheat, I found mine at No Frills in the baking aisle)
• 15g (3 TBSP) dried bread crumbs (I used panko crumbs)
• 45g (1/3 cup) all-purpose flour
• 1 TBSP sugar
• ¼ tsp sea salt

Mix all dough ingredients with a fork or stand mixer until you get a nice smooth batter – it will be soft and will firm up in the fridge. I found my batter a little less than smooth with the pressed cottage cheese not being perfectly blended, but the dumplings boiled up just fine without bursting! Chill the batter (covered) for at least half an hour (and up to several days – I ran out of time and had mine refrigerated for 4 days.)

For the Filling:

• 8 to 12 American Persimmons; mashed through a strainer or with seeds & skin removed carefully (see notes below).

Wash your fruit and pat dry. I found it very labour intensive to remove seeds and skin from the persimmons, especially ones that were quite soft and ripe (I also did a large amount of persimmons and still have several quarts of mashed persimmon in the freezer, so I may be biased about the labour-level). I ended up with around 8-10 firm persimmons which I trimmed off the stem/sepals with a paring knife and then slipped it under the skin and peeled it off (sometimes I had to cut flesh off as well) and these I saved separately to try making dumplings with whole fruit pieces. Then for the rest of my soft, extra ripe persimmons I mashed and removed the seeds, then put through my mom’s tomato press (the seeds were too big to fit through). If you don’t have a tomato press, mashing them through a strainer will work well enough too. The skin is very tannic and even with mashing through a strainer or peeling it off you may still have some tannic flavour to the final dumplings.

The mashed persimmons were a puree texture, which doesn’t work well for filling dumplings. To make it easy, I plopped dollops of the persimmon puree onto a cookie sheet (lined with parchment-paper) and froze them for an hour to make a firm ball-shaped chunk of persimmon to wrap my dough around.

The original recipe recommended placing a sugar cube inside the fruit, but I chose not to add anything. In hindsight I think it would be neat to try adding little 1cm x 1cm cubes of butter, using the sugar option, or using caramel cubes since my end result was a bit dry/tannic.

Forming the Dumplings:

Work with either wet hands or floured hands (test to see what you prefer, I liked wet). Scoop a generous handful of dough and flatten it into a disc about 3-4” (10cm) wide and ½” (1cm) thick. Take a frozen fruit dollop and press it into the center of your dough disc, wrapping the dough firmly around it with as little air bubbles as you can.

I set each formed dumpling onto a parchment lined cookie sheet as I worked. You can freeze these (lay them out on a tray and freeze so they don’t stick together, then store in a freezer bag) and cook from frozen (add some cooking time) or boil them right away.

Boiling & Serving:

Fill a dutch-oven or similar saucepan with water (size it according to how many dumplings you want to boil at once, they need room to move around) and bring to a boil. Turn it down a bit so it is at a gentle simmer and then add your dumplings. A rolling boil might cause dumplings to burst, so do try to keep it at a low simmer the whole time. The dumplings should boil for 15 minutes (longer if from frozen) and you may notice them rise and float closer to the end. If they are floating early because there is an air pocket in the dumpling, keep an eye on it and flip it over a few times to allow all sides to cook. I also gently stirred the dumplings to help ensure they wouldn’t stick to the bottom.

Once finished, the dumplings can be rolled in a mixture of breadcrumbs and cinnamon and then dusted with powdered sugar. They can be served warm or allowed to cool.

I tried out a savory version that was an everything bagel seasoning with parmesan type of thing, but I think it will also be great with a caramel syrup so I plan to try that out with some of the dumplings that I froze.

If you try out this recipe, let us know! We'd especially love to hear your feedback since it's a recipe that is both more versatile and more modified than I originally planned. I am also definitely going to try out this dumpling recipe with apricots and other fruits such as plums, peaches and cherries during the summer when they're in season!

If you're interested in reading about my other American Persimmons experiments (candied and dried) go to this blog post to find more details about them. 

~Jodi