Pawpaw ice cream!

I had a good heavy pawpaw crop from my two trees this year. Enough that its more than the four of us care to eat each day, and event where I plan to share them is still a week off. So I decided to try turning them into "ice cream." My thought was that since the texture and sweetness is similar to banana and frozen bananas are wonderful and amazing, frozen pawpaw should be a real treat.  Of course, I start with a small batch.




This is 9 pawpaws, the biggest ones are a (woman's) handful each.  It's two varieties, an unnamed seedling that I like to call "early Chicago gold" that is reaching the end of its season, and the named variety "Shenandoah" that's just starting to ripen. "Chicago gold" is butterscotch colored with stronger pawpaw flavor, but the fruit tend to be smaller and seedier. "Shenandoah" is white-fleshed and sweet with a milder flavor and large fruits the size of manila mangoes.




Unlike bananas, pawpaws are full of inedible seeds.  Fortunately, the seeds are large so not hard to strain out. for each pawpaw, I rolled the fruit between my hands, sliced off one end, and squished the insides out into the strainer, getting as much pulp out of the skin as possible.  It was messy work.  I did not want any skin in the strainer, because it is very bad tasting and also rather soft so it might get squished through into end product.



A good amount of pawpaw puree, well beaten to an even consistency.  I was surprised how well this kept its color, no oxidization or "browning" that I noticed.



Into the small, blurry, ice cream freezer!

It thickened up quite fast, and I actually had to manually prod with a spatula to keep it moving.



After just 10-12 minutes, it was already at "scooping" consistency, and very smooth.  I transferred to plastic container for storage in freezer.  You can see I ended up with just short of a pint of "ice cream."

After freezing overnight, the texture is harder to scoop, more like sorbet that should sit out a bit.  It melts to a creamy texture in your mouth though.

Tastes like pawpaw, but somehow less sweet than a fresh, room-temperature pawpaw. I might add a bit of syrup to the puree next time.

Howdy M.K! Since we're heading to the cusp of winter, are there any frozen paw paws out there to make my ice cream indigenous style?

That's a great idea!  My dear husband is in love with the idea of pawpaws.  In my local Master Gardener group, there was talk of how they stink and pollinate by flies rather than bees.  Didn't appeal to me, and yet he really wants some.

So, I got three trees via Arbor Day Tree event a couple of years ago.  They didn't survive.  He bought a couple more, planted much higher elevation on our property, though these didn't make it either.  He's ordered five more, which are supposed to show up in the mail in a couple days.  I've proposed a different spot, one of our lowest in elevation this time, with less clay, more loamy soil.

If we get some good pawpaw from them, I will see about trying this out.  Let me know if you have any other pawpaw recipes. 😀🙏

Sounds delicious! I've always wanted to try one, bought a few seedling and no luck. Any chance of getting a few varieties of your seeds to try?

Good evening! Anybody had paw paw jelly before?

Blake Lenoir wrote: Good evening! Anybody had paw paw jelly before?

Blake, Song from Chicago PawPaws makes a jam out of pawpaws, and shares it at some local events.