As you may or may not know my husband is obsessed with locally harvested unusual flavors. He has always loved finding things in the woods to eat and it is an extra bonus if it is rare or out-of-the-ordinary. So you can imagine his excitement when we found these pawpaw fruits near our house. And I was excited because I love their soft, beautifully scarred and speckled green bodies.
As is our usual custom, I get to photograph first and then he can have his way with whatever edibles he has collected. I wasn't sure what he was going to do with them until he called me in and told me he had made butternut squash cookies which I love and are a common occurrence in our house in the fall. But this time he had that special smile on his face that immediately says to me, "I put something weird in these cookies...hope you like them!" That smile always makes me nervous because I am not an adventurous eater. Lucky for me this time it was pawpaw and the flavor added an extra sweetness to the cookies. I can't say that I prefer the cookies with pawpaw because I don't like to mess with perfection (and the butternut squash cookies are really good just as they are). But it was a good cookie, especially with a little vanilla ice cream.
So if you happen to have access to pawpaw fruits, making cookies is an excellent way to use them. I also love the butternut squash cookies without the pawpaw so you should try it either way. If you would like a printable pdf of this recipe click here (it prints landscape on 8.5 x 11 paper) or you can view it larger by clicking on the image below.
After George made the cookies I wanted to photograph them with pawpaw in the background but he used all the ones we had. So this morning we went foraging again to see if we could still find any hanging around. I was super excited to find the "triple" pawpaw below. I had only seen singles or doubles when I was out before. I like to think of it as good luck... like finding a four leaf clover, but instead we found the rare and beautiful tri-lobed pawpaw!
umm..butternut. squash. paw.paw ...whaaat??!! you had me @ butternut.
ReplyDeletelook forward to trying. (and, obviously putting my little paws on a paw. paw.) you're so incredibly creative, as always. thank you for sharing. a.