Preparing to Freeze Dry Pawpaw Fruit Treats for the first time!
Pawpaw is the largest edible fruit native to the United States. They bruise easily and spoil quickly so you generally won’t see them in grocery stores. Your best bet is to find them in season at a Farmers Market or Festival.
I spent two hours in line at a nearby PawPaw Festival to be able to buy a small amount of fruit. 
There was a big demand, and a small supply, so they were limiting how much each person could buy. I’ve been waiting for months for this opportunity to buy some! 
Another booth was providing samples and it was my first time eating pawpaw fruit. It’s delicious but hard to describe as it looks, smells, and tastes like no other fruit I’ve ever had! The closest thing I can imagine would be if you took mango & papaya and added just a touch of vanilla, pear, and a whisper of banana. You only eat the custard-like pulp and not the skin or seeds. 
There was an ice cream truck there selling vanilla ice cream topped with pawpaw purée which appeared to be quite popular!
If I end up with enough ripened pawpaw fruits I'll have to combine some of the puree with some vanilla ice cream to freeze dry - yum!
The yellow pawpaws were super ripe so I'm using them first. The green ones will ripen in a few more days.
I took the pulp from one of the fruits that was extra ripe, combined it with some water in our Mini Food Processor, and spooned into one of my food molds.
The pieces are pre freezing now and will go into the machine in the next batch.
Here's our Link to some cute heart-shaped food molds so you can make some bite-sized FD treats too!
This is a small test run to see how they turn out. I may also combine some of the fruit with peaches or strawberries to see how they turn out. Ripe Pawpaw fruit has a very strong aroma and taste so combining with a little bit of complimentary fruits will taste great and also make the mixture stretch farther.
The pawpaw fruits I bought ranged from super ripe to not yet ripe. Once they ripen in a few more days the FD experiments can continue.
I’ll have follow up posts soon!
Did You Know?
Female Zebra Swallowtail Butterflies lay their eggs solely on the leaves of pawpaw trees, and the caterpillars eat only pawpaw foliage. 
These butterflies would not exist without pawpaw trees!
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