Here I sit on a blustery December day in Southern California enjoying a hot cup of my favorite Darjeeling tea and a slice of this spice cake. Sweet Juliet is curled up at my feet enjoying a quiet nap. Mmmm. Life is good.
I think you will enjoy this cake. I was drawn to bake it because the original recipe was one of Deborah Madison’s recipes and I’m a fan of her cooking. She is a James Beard Award-winning chef and is the author of some wonderful cookbooks: In My Kitchen, The Greens Cookbook, The Savory Way and others. Madison, pictured below, opened the famous San Francisco Bay Area Greens Restaurant in 1979 where she was one of the pioneers in the farm-to-table movement.
Even with Madison’s seal of approval, I was surprised just how really good this cake is. It has warm spicy flavors from cinnamon, cloves and allspice. It has a generous amount of dates, raisins and walnuts, and it is baked in a rich persimmon batter. It would be a great addition to a holiday breakfast table and would make a pretty wonderful hostess gift.
Persimmons, by the way, are thought to have originated in China where writers have sometimes used the fruit as a metaphor for life, writing that it is “tasteless and bitter when young, soft and sweet once mature.” Sounds good to me, soft and sweet baby boomer that I am.
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This recipe is adapted from a Deborah Madison recipe. Here is a link to Amazon where you can buy her book:
Local Flavors by Deborah Madison.
Here is a link to the original recipe from which this recipe was adapted: kitchn: Spiced Persimmon Tea Cake.
