Spoon butter

      While watching a video on America's Test Kitchen cutting board comparison (or was it reading an article from America's Test Kitchen on cutting boards?), I came across the term spoon butter, a mixture of mineral oil and beeswax that is supposed to be even better for your wooden cutting boards/utensils than mineral oil alone.  I was intrigued for although I oil my boards on a semi-regular basis, they were still looking a little dry.  I decided to try to make it.  After rediscovering that our favorite farmer's market was open (Downtown Campbell) and that the honey stand there sells beeswax if you request it in advance, I had all of the ingredients I needed and decided to make spoon butter last night.

Spoon butter

Spoon butter (based off of a recipe from https://creative-culinary.com/wood-butter-wood-utensils-bowls-recipe/)

Ingredients:

4 oz mineral oil
1 oz beeswax

Procedure:

1) In an large pot (I used my Instant Pot on saute), bring water to a low boil.  There should be enough water to cover the bottom third or so of two mason jars.

2) Put the beeswax in one mason jar and the mineral oil in another.  Put them both in the boiling water.

3) Once the beeswax is melted (this will take a little while), pour the mineral oil into the mason jar with the beeswax and mix them with a spoon.  Let the mixture cool.

4) Use a paper towel to apply the spoon butter to your wooden utensils/cutting boards and let it sit for hours to absorb the oil.

Before (to the left) and after (to the right).  Shown immediately after applying spoon butter.  The picture doesn't do it justice, but you can see the the before picture is a lot dryer looking than the lovely sheen after applying the spoon butter.

  I just made this last night, so am applying it to my wooden utensils for the first time today.  I didn't have the exact amounts listed in the original recipe, so I just measured out the amount of mineral oil I had left (about 4 oz) and weighed 1/4 of this (1 oz) of beeswax.  Turns out beeswax is very difficult to cut if it is in block form, but a heated knife eventually did the tick.  Once you apply the finished product, the difference is immediately apparent.  The wood has a nice sheen to it and looks moisturized and non-dried out.  Plus, your hands feel lovely and moisturized after applying it too; an added bonus! I am going to let it sit overnight and might remove the excess oil if it hasn't all absorbed in by tomorrow.    Although I don't remember from which America's Test Kitchen source it was that originally inspired me, I did find this article on spoon butter if you're curious: 

https://www.cooksillustrated.com/how_tos/8625-caring-for-wood-cutting-boards-and-utensils-with-spoon-butter.

Dried Persimmons

     I have never been the biggest fan of persimmons on their own (see this post for my first experiment with persimmons), but love persimmon cookies. During a socially distanced Tech volunteer/former staff get together at the house of the lovely volunteer Sharon, we got to talking about the awesome tree we were gathered around in her backyard. It turned out it was a hachiya persimmon tree, and Sharon said that she always had too many persimmons, so we could help ourselves when they were ripe in the Fall. Come November, Sharon let us know that the persimmons were ready to pick and Scott and I went over and had a lot of fun picking persimmons to our hearts' content. Of course, that meant I had a lot of  persimmons to deal with, so I thought I'd try a new recipe.  I knew that I had loved dried persimmons when I randomly came across them at a grocery store years ago, so decided to try breaking out my food dehydrator for the first time and drying persimmons.  Here is the recipe I followed:

Dried Persimmons (okay, I need to remember to plate my final produce better for my blog pictures)

Dried persimmons (from https://www.mountainfeed.com/blogs/learn/101744903-dried-persimmons-an-easy-winter-snack) 

Ingredients:

Persimmons (duh!)

Procedure:

1) Wash and slice the persimmons.  Fuyu or Hachiya will both make delicious dehydrated slices; if using Hachiya, choose fruits that are fully orange but not as ripe as you would choose for fresh eating; they need to be firm enough to slice. The astringency that is unpleasant to taste in an unripe fruit disappears during the dehydration process.

Slice the persimmons about 1/8" thick. Since persimmons have no core to speak of, you can slice all the way through the center, and enjoy the whole fruit! There is a lovely star shape at the center of each persimmon.

2) Dehydate. Dehydrate on screens in the dehydrator, at about 135 degrees, until the slices are dry, slightly tacky to the touch but not sticky. This should take around 6-8 hours.

3) Store and Enjoy.  Store the slices in mason jars, where they will keep for 6 months or more.

Persimmons in the dehydator

  Boy, was this easy!  It really makes me question why I've waited so long to use the dehydator.  This was also a really good first fruit to dehydrate, as other than removing the top stem, there wasn't any other processing to do (e.g., peeling, removing seeds, etc.)  Use the food processor to slice them into thin pieces (a mandoline would have been perfect for this, but I'm not quite sure where mine is) and put them on the trays.  My dehydrator didn't have precise temperature settings, but medium seems to be the equivalent of 135.  Six hours seemed to be perfect every single time.  If I remembered it, I tried to rotate the trays as the ones on the bottom dried quicker than the ones on the top (they're closer to the heating element).  Also, I did find out that, unlike what the above recipe says, it's not quite true that the astrigency dissapears when you dry the persimmons.  It's still there, but much milder.  However, if you're at all sensitive to this astringency, I would not recommend using Hachiya persimmons.  Use fuyu (the tomato shaped ones) instead.  Poor Scott could not eat these slices without feeling pretty much instantaneously dry mouthed.  I felt so bad for him that I went out and bought fuyu persimmons so he could enjoy dried persimmons as well.

Sharon's awesome persimmon tree

Look at those beautiful persimmons just waiting to be picked

Scott picking persimmons

With the fruit picker and our stash

Look at all of the beautiful fruit!

  A huge thank you to Sharon for so generously sharing her bounty with us.  We're still enjoying your persimmons in December!