Puddin’ it out there Family favourite sweet treats require minimal effort Homemade
By: Eva Wasney Posted: 4:26 PM CST Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2025

It’s officially bread pudding season. Or at least it should be.

November is the perfect time to bring a little low-effort sweetness into your life — the weather is shifting, the days are painfully short and the Halloween candy stash is starting to dwindle.

It’s also the right time of year to find persimmons in large quantities at the grocery store, a core ingredient in one of the recipes below. The dense, bright orange fruits are grown in warmer climates and hit their peak during autumn in Canada.

These easy, feed-a-crowd desserts are also ideal for dinner-party season, which, in my opinion, follows the gluttonous December potluck season and runs January through February, when everyone’s feeling stir crazy but too cash-strapped to dine out.

Today’s Homemade column features recipes for persimmon pudding from Eileen Ewanchuk, muskeg pudding from Grant Anderson and Aunt Rachel’s apple pudding from Cherry White — all of which are served with fond family memories.

Want to share a recipe with Free Press readers? Visit winnipegfreepress.com/homemade to fill out the submission form.

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Persimmon Pudding

60 ml (¼ cup) butter, softened

60 ml (¼ cup) white sugar

1 egg

180 ml (¾ cup) whole milk

180 ml (¾ cup) all purpose flour

2.5 ml (½ tsp) baking soda

250 ml (1 cup) persimmon pulp (roughly two hachiya persimmons)

Note: The persimmons should be ripe and feel soft to the touch. To prepare the pulp, cut the persimmons in half and scrape the pulp from the skins. Mash the pulp with a fork or pulse in a food processor. Persimmon pulp can be prepared ahead and frozen.

Directions: 

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease a deep, glass 2-quart baking dish. The pudding puffs during baking so a deep dish is essential.

Beat the butter and sugar together in a large bowl. Add milk, flour, baking soda and persimmon pulp and beat together gently until smooth.

Pour the batter into the prepared baking dish. Bake for 45 minutes to one hour, until the pudding is a dark reddish brown.

Serve warm with ice cream or whipped cream.

“In the late 1950s my aunt left her teaching job in Saskatchewan to go to Indianapolis to help her brother, my uncle, with his young family as his wife was very ill. During her stay, she was introduced to persimmons and this pudding recipe. She brought it back home with her and shared it with my mom. Persimmons were not well known by Canadians, but even in the ‘60s they could be found in our grocery stores.

“When my mother saw overripe persimmons, she would negotiate a lower price with the produce manager. The produce manager probably didn’t know why she would buy these very soft persimmons, but that’s when they were perfect for pudding.

“I love this persimmon pudding. The colour is gorgeous and the texture of the pudding is thick and porous. It’s surprising that it has so much unique flavour with no spices.”

— Eileen Ewanchuk

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Muskeg Pudding

Sauce

125 ml (½ cup) brown sugar

30 ml (2 tbsp) butter or margarine (we didn’t always have butter around!)

250 ml (1 cup) raisins

2.5 ml (½ tsp) vanilla

500 ml (2 cups) water

Batter

15 ml (1 tbsp) butter or margarine

125 ml (½ cup) white sugar

125 ml (½ cup) milk

250 ml (1 cup) flour

2 tsp baking powder

Pinch of salt

Directions:

To make the sauce, add all ingredients to a pot and bring to a boil.

Mix batter ingredients together in a deep baking dish.

Carefully pour the hot sauce over the batter. I sometimes use a large spoon to deflect the liquid so the batter doesn’t get too stirred up.

Preheat the oven to 350 F and bake for 30 minutes. Serve warm with ice cream.

A family favourite since as long as I can remember. My father used to work in the construction business, mainly operating draglines. These machines were able to excavate and initiate road construction through swampy terrain, where no other machine could go. These ‘muskegs’ were often a mossy organic surface on top of a very wet underlayer, the ‘floating bog’ of lore. This pudding has a similar texture, a baked dough that rises above a liquid syrupy base.”

— Grant Anderson

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Aunt Rachel’s Apple Pudding

Dough

250 ml (1 cup) flour

15 ml (1 tbsp) baking powder

1 ml (¼ tsp) salt

5 ml (1 tsp) sugar

30 ml (2 tbsp) cold butter

125 ml (½ cup) milk

Filling

250 ml (1 cup) tart apples, finely chopped

60 ml (¼ cup) brown sugar

1 ml (¼ tsp) nutmeg

30 ml (2 tbsp) butter

Sauce

125 ml (½ cup) sugar

15 ml (1 tbsp) flour

Pinch of salt

250 ml (1 cup) boiled water

30 ml (2 tbsp) butter

Directions:

To make the dough, combine flour, baking powder, salt and sugar in a bowl. Cut in butter and stir in milk until dough holds together.

Roll out the dough and spread apples over top in an even layer. Sprinkle apples with brown sugar, nutmeg and dot with butter. Roll dough into a cylinder, as you would a cinnamon roll. Cut into 2.5-cm (1-inch) slices and place in a baking dish.

To make the sauce, stir sugar, flour and salt together in a bowl. Gradually add boiled water to the sugar mixture, stirring until thickened. Stir in butter and pour sauce over the dough.

Preheat the oven to 375 F and bake for 30 minutes or until light brown. Serve hot.

“This recipe is from an old Blue Ribbon cookbook that belonged to my mother, or perhaps my grandmother. I made this pudding to help to fill up three growing boys in the 1960s. It took a little time but I was a stay-at-home mom.

“An economical dessert, as it only called for two apples (one large one would do), I think I used cinnamon instead of nutmeg as this was the preferred spice in our household in St. James. I still have this old cookbook, once well used, and the pages splattered with various batters.”

— Cherry White

eva.wasney@winnipegfreepress.com