"...way down yonder in the pawpaw patch."

So goes the old folk song about that odd indigenous fruit, the pawpaw. The northernmost member of an otherwise tropical family of fruits that includes the custard-apple and the ylang-ylang, pawpaw trees grow wild throughout Eastern North America, from Florida to Canada. The small, cold-tolerant trees produce edible fruits that ripen after the first frosts of fall. These ovular fruits are about 6 inches in length and 2 inches in diameter. They are green at first, but turn dark yellow and brown when ripe. The flesh of the pawpaw fruit has a very soft, custard-like texture and tastes somewhat similar to a banana. The center of the fruit is lined with large black seeds about the size and shape of cannellini beans.

My husband planted a few pawpaw trees on our property several years ago, and they fruit prolifically each fall. It's too bad, therefore, that I don't particularly like the taste of pawpaws, and that I can't think of very many ways to use these abundant local fruits. My husband eats a few of them raw each year, but I don't like them well enough to eat them out of hand. I use them mainly for baking, albeit not very creatively. I made a batch of pawpaw bread yesterday, substituting pawpaws for bananas in a standard banana bread recipe. This is a good way to use pawpaws. Another tasty possibility is pawpaw cream pie. The mashed flesh also can be blended into smoothies as a banana substitute.

If anyone has suggestions about ways to use pawpaws, please share them!