Four P coffee cake with persimmons, pears, paw paws and Pecans, pgs 160-61

 I've been excited about making this coffee cake since I got the book in August. First, in late summer we got the paw paws and froze the pulp. Later in the fall, we picked persimmons. Next, we got pecans from an orchard in Columbia. And, twice now I've bought pears to soften for the recipe only to let them spoil before I could take the time to make the cake. Bother. But, now I think the stars are finally lining up and I'm ready to get this job done. As far as I know this is the recipe with the most wild ingredients in the book. Well, pears are certainly not native trees, but are hardy enough that you can often find old fruit-bearing pear trees around old home sites with buildings long rotten and sunk back to the earth. My pears, however, and are from ye old grocery store.

Once I made it, however, I was something just on the positive side of disappointed. My cake came out, well, certainly edible but not something anyone took seconds of. And I noticed my huband and I were the only ones going for it at breakfast the next morning, and we only took wee small pieces. I wonder what  went wrong? I loved the thought of the recipe, being 4 P and all, but I'd put the cake somewhere in the it's ok category, not the love it category. It was dupper dense and filling. I gave my mother-in-law a very large slice of the cake (we were visiting her when I made it) and then felt sorry for her after I had a bite and realized how filling it was. Have you ever tried to eat something way past being full? I remember someone serving homemade cheesecake to me in pieces the size of pie, like about a sixth of the cheesecake. It was killer. I was so full  but wanted to put it all down my gullet so the maker felt it was appreciated. It was pumpkin cheesecake. My, it's still so vivid in my memory. Anyway, I think that's the way Dorothy felt with the cake I made.

I toasted some slices for breakfast and thought that helped. Perhaps I didn't bake it enough. Perhaps the paw paw or permissons weren't the right consistancy and the baking powder just couldn't make the cake rise. Not sure. But, I do know that after I picked and depulped persimmons and paw paws, deshelled pecans, ripened and cut up pears, zested two oranges, juiced a lemon and whatever else the recipe called for, the cake should have turned out better than it did. I'd love to try someone elses attempt at this recipe. Personally, I'm now all out of paw paw, c'est la vie.