Suggestions for what I can do with Goldenberry

My local supermarket just got these in for the first time ever. Since I've been trying to grow Virginia Groundcherry for a while, I was intrigued & bought me some. Unfortunately, the descriptions of the taste being a cross between a tomato & a pineapple were a bit too accurate. Actually tastes like I dipped pineapple in raw tomato paste- really, really overpowering. Better than most tropical fruit I've tried, but definitely not for me.

Any suggestions for what I can do with the remainder? I have a feeling they could be useful, if I knew what to do with them. Hopefully, the Native variety will have a bit more plesant of a taste, if I ever end up actually getting fruit from them.

Maybe salsa?  Either raw or charred.

We're planting groundcherries for the first time this year. I have a recipe for Ground Cherry-Lemon jelly that I want to try.

Did you get golden berries or ground cherries? The names are used interchangeably sometimes and they are closely related but ground cherries are a different plant than golden berries. I've grown both and the plants look different. Golden berries are more compact with fuzzy leaves. Ground cherries are smoother and more stretched out- more like a tomatillo plant but smaller stems and leaves. Sorry, that's not very technical. I'll see if I can find the botanical names. Also golden berries need a hotter and longer growing season than ground cherries in my experience.

The fruit of the golden berry and the ground cherry look very similar but I don't like ground cherries and I LOVE golden berries. There are a few different varieties of ground cherries so there might be one I would like but the ones I've tried tasted too sweet and very tomato-ey, though any tomato loving kids I know thought they were great. Golden berries are very tart and don't taste tomato-ey at all in my opinion and the kids I know who hate tomatoes like eating them. And if you dry golden berries, they get super sour, like nature's sour patch kids. Very addictive if you like sour things.

So if you really have golden berries, try drying them. Absolutely no tomato taste. It's like a super sour raisin. If you have a kind of ground cherry, I don't know what you should do with them because I never did figure out anything to make me like them.

And if you have the ground cherries growing in your garden and you don't like them, be aware that they will self seed and come back every year though they are pretty easy to pull up.

Physalis peruviana- This one is the golden berry. Tart and more fruity. Also known as Peruvian ground cherry.

Physalis pruinosa- This is the more common one (and there are different cultivars within this) and is very sweet and tomato-ey. This would be the one you are growing in your garden.

I don't know precisely what kind of groundcherries I bought from the store, but they are apparently sourced from Ecuador. The ones I am trying to grow are the Native Physalis Virginiana, but they are very stressed & not doing well.

I love learning I don't know as much as I thought I did. 😂
I only came across two varieties when I was trying to learn about them a few years ago.

So now in addition to your native one, I'm learning all these Physalis are all edible too: P. ixocarpa, P. fendleri, P. heterophylla, P. lanceoleta, P. longifolia, P. neomexicana, P. pruinosa, P. pubescens, P. turbinata, P. virginiana, and P. angulata.

I wonder if I'd like any of these varieties or if they all taste like over sweet tomatoes? I'm curious whether your Virginia variety will taste good to you or not, if you get them to do better.