It’s that time of year when winter fruits are in abundance – in particular, persimmons in our neck of the woods – and nothing seems more welcoming than the smell of spices and baking on a grey and stormy day. With a surfeit of Fuyu persimmons (these are the hard, apple-type) and a rock-hard pear in my fruit bowl, I decided to knock-up a quick and easy cake for Thanksgiving breakfast. I mean, if you can’t eat cake for breakfast on Thanksgiving, when can you?
It filled the house with a delicious sweet wafting scent, and the hungry teen—who is now 16!—soon wolfed down half of it with a cup of tea.
One of the unusual things about this cake is that you rub the fat into the flour, rather than using the usual method of creaming together the butter and sugar first. This makes for a more open, rustic-y texture, in my opinion. And with all that fruit contained within, you can even kid yourself that it’s kind of healthy. I made my version gluten-free using King Arthur gluten-free flour, but you can easily just use regular unbleached flour instead. I hope you like it!
- 10m
- 50m
- 1h
- 1 cake
Ingredients
- 8 ounces gluten-free flour (I use King Arthur - or you can use regular wheat flour)
- 4 ounces cold butter, diced
- 1 Fuyu persimmon, peeled and diced
- 1 slightly unripe pear, peeled, cored and diced
- 2 eggs, beaten
- 7 ounces superfine baker's sugar, or granulated if that's all you have
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
- 2 ounces small currants
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit and line a square baking pan with parchment paper.
- In a stand mixer, or using a pastry blending tool, rub the cold butter into the flour, cinnamon, baking soda and salt, until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.
- Stir in the sugar, chopped fruit and raisins.
- Create a well in the mixture, and add the beaten eggs and vanilla essence. Mix very slowly until just blended to avoid mashing up the fruit.
- Transfer the batter to your prepared baking tin - level out to the corners and then pop in the oven. Set a timer for 30 mins after which time, check it's not browning too much on one side - you'll probably have to rotate the tin. Then check the cake again after 15-20 minutes. It's ready when a skewer comes out clean.
- Set aside to cool before cutting up into equal squares, or just devour it right out of the pan. If you wish, you can sift some powdered sugar over the top.
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