If you start each day listening to Hearts on Fire and telling yourself you really are the greatest, then this is the fruit for you!
APPEARANCE Rating: ★★★★☆

Heart shaped green fruit with smooth scales, big enough that I wanted to use two hands to lift it (maybe 4-5 inches across), beige flesh with big black seeds.

AROMA Rating: ★★★★★

Extremely sweet and floral aroma reminiscent of vanilla, strawberries and banana. I can not stop bringing it up to my nose. Sooooo alluring. There should be perfume made of this. I am completely puzzled by the existence of pear perfume and not cherimoya. Weird.

TEXTURE Rating: ★★★★★

Smooth and creamy, slightly grainy like a soft pear.

TASTE Rating: ★★★★★

Tropical ice cream or pudding, just an insane mix of flavors from guava to banana to strawberry to pineapple all covered in a deep rich vanilla with a hint of spice.

OVERALL Overall Rating: ★★★★★

This tastes like exotic, cool creme brulee. I can’t believe this comes off the tree this way and did not require hours of mixing and baking and hovering on my part. As you may know, I like fruit quite a lot, but this is the first fruit that has knocked me over with love, particularly since it looks like a heart when you cut it in half. SWOON. It really is amazing. Find it and eat it.

FRUIT

Cherimoya

VARIETY

Dr. White

PEAK

Winter

ORIGIN

Ecuador,Columbia,Bolivia

GROWN

California

PURCHASED

Farmer’s Market

NOTES

Cherimoya is also called custard apple but of all the fruit flavors present here, apple isn’t really one of them so I am rejecting that name. You will see in the top picture a slightly different looking cherimoya with little nubs or nipples. That one has a pretty different flavor profile and I will talk about it later. I am giving you a few recipes below, but I personally can’t imagine changing one thing about this fruit other than eating it raw or maybe chilled a bit. Well, I would change one thing…those two cherimoyas cost me $12. Worth it? Yes. But highway robbery nonetheless.

RECIPES

Cherimoya Milkshake
Cherimoya Pancakes (scroll down)