Black sapote oat bars, variation two

My original black sapote oat bar recipe, two years ago, was a pretty big hit, both for the folks who tried the batch I made and for others looking to use their excess sapotes. As I said in my last post, I've got some new ideas for flavor combinations. I figured it would be a good idea to keep the rest of the dish constant so I could isolate that variable to see how it changes the results.

Before, the filling in the bars was made up of black sapote pulp mixed with walnut butter, a bit of cinnamon and a bit of coffee. No cooking involved. The result was a sort of mocha/fig flavor with toasty, nutty overtones. I'm going a rather different direction this time.


Filling ingredients:
1 1/2 cups black sapote pulp
1/2 cup not-too-fruity, not-too-dry red wine [I used a pinot noir]
2 Tablespoons dutch process cocoa
1/2 cup sugar
1 pinch salt
1/2 Tablespoon vanilla

1. Bloom the cocoa in the wine for a minute or two.

2. Add the choco-wine, sugar and salt to the black sapote pulp. Mix well, mushing up the sapote. Cook down over medium-low heat until it thickens and reduces to 1 1/2 cups, stirring frequently.

The mixture will be thick and splattery so be careful.

3. Cool until it stops steaming and add vanilla to taste.

No change to the bar itself:
3/4 cup butter, softened,
1 cup packed light brown sugar
blended,
and then mixed with
1 1/2 cups rolled oats,
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
and another pinch of salt.

I packed 2/3 on the bottom this time instead of just half, letting it rise up a bit on the sides and in the corners which should help keep things from sticking.

Then I spread the sapote mixture out and topped with the rest of the dough, sprinkled and spread around evenly, but not pressed down.

I baked at 400 degrees for 20-some minutes minutes until it's browned and it was clear the sugar had melted and the bars were fairly solid. It came out sizzling. I don't remember it sizzling before.

And here it is after cooling:


This turned out quite well indeed. The flavor was familiar, but hard to pin down. The fig element was there again, but it was filled out with rich chocolate and tanin notes. It was kind of like a port, maybe. A really great contrast with the light sweet crisp flavor of the crust, particularly with the generous amount of filling I used.

If you didn't want to make oat bars, the filling could work well as a swirl in a quick bread. Or you could cook it down a little more and use it as a layer in a chocolate cake. Or it could work as a pudding or ice cream base with the addition of some egg yolks and some cream. Lots of options worth a try.

Oh, hey, one last thing before I go. Did you know that, if cut a just-ripe black sapote around its equator, you can unscrew it open like an avocado? It leaves the seeds sitting there exposed and easily removed. It takes a little finesse to get the pulp out of the half-skins, but it's a much less messy process than what I had been doing before.

Black sapote clafoutis

I'm not really out of my cooking funk quite yet, but two out of three of my black sapotes finally ripened and I did have an interesting recipe prepared for them so it didn't take too much to prod me into action.

So you probably want to know what a clafoutis is. From an American perspective, it's a French version of a buckle. You might also want to know what a buckle is. It's a dish in the crumble family. Depending on how you prepare the floury stuff that goes with the fruit, you can make a crumble, a crisp, a buckle or a grunt. For a buckle, you put your fruit on the bottom of a baking dish and pour over cake batter. For a clafoutis, the batter is closer to a crêpe: looser and eggier mainly.

Traditionally, clafoutises are made with cherries, but you do see them with other fruits, mainly tart berries. And if I had a reasonable amount of fruit to work with I'd whisk some lemon juice into the pulp and go with that. But I don't so I went with my black sapote back up plan which is to mix it 50/50 with a nut butter. Almond by preference, but peanut by what I've actually got on hand. In this case I mixed something like:
1/3 cup black sapote pulp
1/3 cup natural peanut butter
1 Tablespoon honey
1 Tablespoon sugar.
That gave me enough for about a third of a standard batch of clafoutis so I scaled down.

That means the batter was:
a bit less than 1/3 cup flour
1/6 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1 small pinch salt
1 egg
1 1/3 Tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/4 cup milk [I used cream since I had some some]

As with crêpe batter, I mixed the dry ingredients, whisked in the egg, then the butter then the cream.

Then I poured the batter over dollops of the sapote mixture in a small baking dish and baked at 350 degrees for a half hour until browned and puffy.

I let cool to, if not room temperature, then at least not hot and served with a little powdered sugar or, as pictured, with cinnamon whipped cream.

The baking has brought out the chocolatier aspects of the black sapote, which is certainly not a bad thing in this context, although it makes the flavor a bit less Floridianly exotic. I had hoped the honey would have helped to boost the fruity flavors, but I guess not. The crumbly brownie-esque texture of the fruit mixture contrasts with the lighter moist sponge-cakey texture of the cake bit. Its milder flavor cuts the intensity of the fruit and is mildly sweet and a little eggy on its own. This is very different than how this dish would work with cherries, but it's pretty tasty in its own, heartier way. I'd like to try it with the sapotes unadulterated by peanut butter to see how it goes.

CSA week seven - Black spaote banana meringue cookies

I had no reason to think this was going to work. My searching didn't turn up any recipes that combined whipped egg whites and fruit pulp which is usually a pretty good indication that it's not a good idea. But I had everything I needed lying around so I thought I'd give it a try just to see what would happen.

Ingredients:
pulp from several small black sapotes
1 banana, frozen and defrosted
1-3 Tablespoons sugar depending on how sweet your fruit is
1 pinch salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
5 Tablespoons whole wheat pastry flour
some agave nectar
2/3 cup egg whites

0. Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

1. Blend the fruit. Add the sugar and vanilla and blend some more. Stir in the flour.

2. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. Stir 1/3 of the egg whites into the fruit mixture to lighten. Fold in the second third. Fold in the third third. Check for sweetness. Fold in agave nectar until the flavors pop.

3. Using a coffee or small ice cream scoop, dispense dollops of batter onto cookie sheets prepared using your most extreme non-stick procedure. Bake for 40 minutes, turning halfway through. Take them out, try one, discover it's raw in the center and put them back in for 15 minutes at 350 degrees.

For my second batch I found 25 minutes at 350 degrees worked well, but the hour of sitting around deflated the cookies which may have had some effect so use your best judgement.


I call these cookies, but only because I can't think of a better word for them. They've got the soft squishy/chewy texture of angel's food cake. Actually many are partially pre-squished due to troubles I had getting them off the parchment paper I baked them on.

Fresh out of the oven they were a little crisp around the edges, but that fades. There's still a little crystal-crunch from the sugar which I actually like, but you may want to avoid by using confectioner's sugar.

Despite having substantially more sapote than banana, the flavor is predominantly caramelized banana. The sapote rounds it out, but it could be mistaken for a hint of chocolate. Pretty tasty. Maybe it could use a little acid to brighten it up--a lemon sugar glaze maybe?

CSA week five - Frozen black sapote caramel mousse

I adapted this recipe from a fig recipe here. It uses a technique I've been curious about for a while. There are a fair number of churnless ice cream recipes out there that fold the flavorings into to whipped cream and then freeze. Obviously the results can't be too close to real ice cream or nobody would have ever used hand churns and the electric ice cream churn would never have been invented. But maybe it's different but just as good? Probably not, but worth a try to find out.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water, divided
3 egg yolks
1 cup fresh black sapote pulp, whisked smooth
1 Tablespoon almond butter
2 dashes cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract, divided
1 1/4 cups heavy cream

0. Separate three eggs. Save the whites for angel food cake. Put the yolks into a large bowl. Chill your mixer's bowl and whisk attachment.

1. Mix the black sapote pulp, almond butter, cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon of the vanilla.

2. Heat the sugar and 1/4 cup of water in a small heavy saucier or a medium-sized heavy saucepan. Turn heat to medium. Stir continuously until the sugar dissolves, wiping down the sides of the pan if sugar starts crystalizing, stir frequently until the syrup comes to a boil then stop stirring. Cook, keeping a close eye on the color and thickness of the syrup, until a golden brown caramel forms at around 340 degrees.

At least, that's if you're going to parallel the original recipe. My stove conked out when my syrup was at just 250 degrees. That's thread stage, just barely beyond simple syrup. I use a sugar with a little molasses left in which compensates a little, and I am pretty happy with the results, but I think it would be even better with a proper caramel.

3. Meanwhile, whisk the egg yolks. Three yolks is too little for a beater to get a good grip on so you'll probably have to do it by hand like I did. You're aiming for ribbon stage where the yolks have thickened to the point where you can drizzle a line on top from your whisk and it'll stay visible for a few seconds. Hard to do by hand, but at least get to the point where the egg yolks lighten to a sunny yellow color.

4. When the caramel is ready carefully add the other 1/4 cup water. Use a spatter guard or at least some oven mitts. Stir to incorporate and to cool the caramel enough to stop it cooking. Pour the caramel into the egg yolks by drizzling it down the side of the bowl while whisking. When it's all incorporated, whisk in the sapote mixture.

5. Whip the cream with your chilled bowl and whisk until well into the soft peak stage but before it starts firming up. Add the rest of the vanilla early on in the whisking and maybe a little powdered sugar. I started this while the caramel was cooking, but you can stop after step four and keep the sapote-caramel mixture in the refrigerator until you're ready to continue.

Hold back a half cup of whipped cream and fold the sapote-caramel mixture into the rest. Freeze the mouse overnight and serve topped with a dollop of the reserved whipped cream and the sauce I'm about to describe. I knew I wasn't going to serve the mouse right away so I just spread the reserved whipped cream on top and froze it too. That was a mistake; the extra texture and temperature of unfrozen whipped cream would have been nice.

Black sapote almond sauce

The original recipe called for making another caramel and then adding figs to it. With my stove not working, that wasn't an option. Here's what I came up with while waiting for the electrician to show up.

Ingredients:
pulp from 1 small black sapote
1 1/2 Tablespoon almond butter
1 Tablespoon cream
2 Tablespoons agave nectar
2 dashes allspice

1. Add agave (or honey or simple syrup) in stages, mixing well and tasting until you get to the level of sweetness you'd like.

2. Heat in the microwave for a minute before serving.


You'll want to let the mousse sit out a little while to soften. With my extra-cold freezer, ten minutes did the trick, but I still carved out a chunk rather than scoop a serving.

The mousse's flavor is distinct but not intense, as much cream as sapote. The almond butter and cinnamon rounding them out and downplaying the sapote's fruitiness. The half cup of sugar isn't a lot so the mousse isn't overwhelmingly sweet. The texture is light, fluffy even, but slightly crisp even after out of the freezer for a while. The result is pleasant, but understated.

The sauce, in contrast, is boldly flavored. The agave emphasizes the sapote's fruitiness despite the larger percentage of almond butter.

The pairing works really well. The different sweeteners and spices bring out different aspects of the sapote and the contrast in flavors and textures makes for some interest too. This isn't a knockout like the sapote toffee cake, but nobody's going to complain about it.

That said, they'll wonder why you didn't make ice cream instead. The texture of frozen mousse is like cheap ice cream that's been half-defrosted and refrozen. I think I liked it better before I froze it. No reason you couldn't serve it that way either, really.

CSA week three - Black sapote toffee cake

This is an adaption of a date cake recipe created by Chicago pastry chef Kate Neumann that I found on Food and Wine's website. I've got the idea that black sapote can be successfully substituted any time you find dried fruit that's been simmered and softened as Neumann calls for here.

Ingredients:
CAKE
1 cup black sapote gunk (two black sapotes peeled and seeded)
1 Tablespoon molasses
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
salt
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup plus 2 Tablespoons dark brown sugar
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup pecans
1 handful finely shredded coconut
2 Tablespoons corn syrup

TOFFEE SAUCE
1/2 stick unsalted butter
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/8 teaspoon salt
[The original recipe called for double the amount of sauce, but that's quite excessive. As you'll see, even this amount is generous.]


0. Prepare a 8 to 10-inch cake pan by buttering the sides, placing parchment paper in the bottom and buttering the paper. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

1. [The original recipe called for 7 ounces of dates simmered in 3/4 cup of water until it boiled down and then blended smooth with the molasses. No need to do any of that with sapote.] Just whisk the sapote gunk with the molasses until it's fairly smooth.

3. Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger and 1/4 teaspoon salt.

4. Use your mixer to beat butter with 1/2 cup brown sugar until fluffy. Beat in the egg, then the vanilla. Mix in the dry ingredients. Mix in the sapote mixture. Beat until fluffy again. Pour into prepared cake pan and smooth out. Bake for 25-35 minutes depending on the size of your cake pan. [I had a 10-inch pan instead of the 9-inch pan the original recipe called for so I reduced the baking time from 30 to 25 minutes.]

5. Meanwhile, break up the pecans to your preferred size. Spread them and the coconut into a pie plate or baking dish. Add then to the oven for 8-10 minutes until fragrant and golden.

6. Also meanwhile, mix the corn syrup with the remaining 2 Tablespoons brown sugar and another 1/4 teaspoon salt in a small bowl. Heat briefly in the microwave to get the sugar good and dissolved.

7. Remove the cake from the oven, cool slightly and then dump it out onto a cooling rank. Peel off the parchment and return it to the cake pan. Sprinkle the pecans and coconut onto the parchment then drizzle with the corn syrup mixture. Return the cake to the pan, preferably the same side up. [This is much easier said than done. If you've got a method that works for this sort of thing, do please share.] Retrieve the broken pieces of cake from the counter and pack them back into the cake pan as best you can.

Return to oven and cook another 12-17 minutes depending on the size of of your cake pan. When the cake is springy and dry, remove from oven, cool slightly and then invert onto a cooling rack. Peel off the parchment trying to retain as much of the nuts and coconut as you can. Return to cake pan or place on serving platter.

8. For the toffee sauce, place the butter and brown sugar into a small pot. Melt the butter over medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Bring to a boil. Remove from heat and add cream. Stir until blended and then return to heat.

Return to a boil and simmer 5 minutes. Stir in salt, let cool slightly and then pour over the cake. Let sit overnight to soak in.

Well that was a bit of a project, but the results are pretty impressive:

This was a big hit in the office. It's pretty rich, but not nearly as over-the-top as you'd think from looking at it. Despite everything else, you can taste the black sapote in there with its not-quite-chocolately flavor undergirding the bright toffee and nuts. Combined with the brown sugar, it's hard to identify, but it's an important component giving the cake depth and keeping it from becoming cloying.

The texture is deeply moist, but still caky, not like those brownies people try to pass off as extra-rich because they're only half-baked. The toffee did successfully epoxy the broken cake back together which is a bonus.

While I'm not going to say the toppings are a bad thing, the cake is pretty good on its own. You can probably save some of that trouble and just dust it with powdered sugar and you'd still be pretty happy with the results.

CSA week nine - Black sapote chews, a second try

The failure of this recipe a few days ago because of my lack of attention rather than any intrinsic fault of the recipe has been bugging me. I've got one sapote left so I wanted to give it another try.

Into my brand new 1 quart saucier went:
1/2 cup sapote pulp
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup smashed walnuts (The bulk bags at Fresh Market are pretty sturdy so I left my leftover walnuts in their bag and whacked at them with my crab mallet. I figure the powdery, buttery mush would help thicken up the mix and infuse the flavor better than chunks would.)
1/2 Tablespoon salted butter
1 egg (whole instead of just the yolk to lighten it up)
1 squeeze lemon juice
1/8 teaspoon vanilla extract (messing about with cocoa and coffee with black sapote is certainly interesting, but the classic additions of lemon and vanilla aren't to be ignored.)

I brought it to a simmer, turn the heat way down and stirred constantly as it cooked and thickened up. Instead of timing it, I kept track of the temperature with a candy thermometer. I was hoping it would act like a proper confection, but the temperature stopped rising at 205 degrees. The mix was probably too shallow for a proper reading. I judged by texture and the immediate threat of burning instead.

When I was afraid to cook it any longer I spread it out on parchment paper on a sheet pan and let it cool for a half hour and then into the refrigerator for another hour. Still more of a paste than a chew. So, I am mixing in just 1/8 teaspoon of xantham gum. Huh, no change. That's odd. Xanthan gum is pretty powerful; 1/8 teaspoon should have thickened it right up. Does xanthan gum go stale? Ah well.

Flavor's not half bad, though--the raw black sapote mellowed and enriched with the molasses, citrus and vanilla notes --and the texture is thick and creamy. Call it black sapote butter-- very nice on a slice of toast.

CSA week nine wrap-up

I hoped to have another post today but I screwed up the dish and ended up having to throw it out so you're getting the wrap-up instead.

Actually, I threw a fair amount of produce out this week. I had hoped to make another salad soup but the lettuce had gone too grotty so out it went. In contrast, I peeled the canistel too soon and, when I washed up, found my fingers covered with the sticky stomach-ache-causing sap so I tossed that too to be on the safe side.

The dish today was an adaption of this recipe for persimmon chews. I substituted in black sapote for the persimmon, used light brown sugar and added a little vanilla and a good squeeze of lemon juice. The resulting goop was tasty but, after a lengthy time on the double boiler and a cool down, showed no sign it intended to thicken into anything close to a "chew". I don't see how the recipe would work with persimmons, even the more solid sort. The double boiler should keep temperatures from rising anywhere near what's needed for the sugar to thicken up. Maybe persimmons have lots and lots of pectin?

So I figured, put the mix right into the pot, get it up to 250 degrees and that should do the trick. But I got distracted and let it burn, ruining it and quite possibly the pot. I still think the recipe has some promise so I might try it again next time I get some sapote to work with.

I do have one success to report, though. I made the Italian green bean recipe suggested by drlindak in the comments on this week's start-up post. I made the one small change of substituting in the milder pecorino toscano for the pecorino romano. I'm usually not much of a pesto fan, but I liked this a lot. Maybe I just don't care for pine nuts.

CSA week seven - Black sapote oat bars

Yet another night I really don't feel like cooking dinner, but these bar cookies are simple enough and since they've got fruit, nuts and oats in them I can pretend they're healthy and eat them for breakfast.

The last time I made these I made the fruit filling with a jar of black cherry jam, a bit of vanilla and a quarter cup of a spicy red wine. The next time, I'm going to use pumpkin butter, ground almonds and nutmeg. This time I used the black sapote swirl from the coffee cake recipe in the week seven newsletter (cut down by a third):
1/3 cup vanilla sugar
1 cup mashed black sapote
3 Tablespoons ground walnuts (I don't know why I expected a powder when I ground walnuts in my spice grinder. I actually got nut chunks in half formed walnut butter. By the way, walnut butter? Really good. I did not know that.), and
1 pinch ground cinnamon
blended together.
I added
1 generous pinch fine-ground coffee
and a pinch of salt.

The bar itself is made of:
3/4 cup butter, softened,
1 cup packed light brown sugar
blended,
and then mixed with
1 1/2 cups rolled oats,
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
and another pinch of salt.

That's half packed on the bottom of a buttered 9"x13" baking pan, then spread with the black sapote mixture. The other half is mixed with a small handful of crushed walnut bits and crumbled on top.

All baked at 400 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes until light brown. Well, actually, it starts light brown. Slightly darker brown?

Like I said, simple enough.

The result is really pretty good. The outer layers are, of course, crisp and oaty as they should be and somewhat less sweet than you'd expect given how much sugar's in it. The filling is creamy with a little more body than the epoxy gel the jam reduced to in my last batch. The sapote's fruitiness is hidden behind notes of nut and spice leaving a mild mocha start with a lingering toasted oat/walnut butter finish. Hard to guess that there's fruit in there unless you were told; the addition of coffee, I think, goes some distance to bringing out the sapote's psuedo-chocolate flavors. Call it mocha-cream walnut oat bars and I don't think anyone would suspect there's fruit in there. I may just take them in to work tomorrow to confirm that hypothesis.

CSA week two overflow - black sapote colada sherbet

On second thought, maybe those sapotes are ready to be used after all.

As I mentioned a week ago, my plan for any tropical fruit we get this year is to substitute it into my unexpectedly fabulous piña colada sherbet recipe for either the bananas or the pineapple depending on the texture and see how it turns out. Last July I subbed in mango for the bananas which worked quite well but I haven't gotten back to the idea until now.

I'm taking out the bananas again this time which gives me some concern over texture as bananas are rather special in that regard. But if anything can replace that thick fat-mimicking creaminess is sapote. That makes my ingredient list:
1 large and 1 small black sapote
1 1/2 cups fresh pineapple
2 Tablespoons or so pineapple juice from the container I was keeping the pineapple pieces in
1 cup thick coconut milk
1/2 cup sugar
1 Tablespoon light rum
and
1 Tablespoon dutch process cocoa

The challenge each time I do this is picking the complementary flavors that will bring out the flavor of the guest fruit. In the original I used lime juice and hot sauce. For the mango, lime juice again along with ginger, cinnamon and allspice. This time the obvious choice is to nix the lime and add cocoa. I'll have to do some research to figure out the best choices when canistels and caiminos come along.

No cooking required here so I just tossed everything into the blender and let it spin. The result is, texturally and visually, indistinguishable from chocolate pudding and not far off in flavor either. An ice cream churn is entirely optional; you could serve this as is.




You could, anyway; I've got a bad churining habit to maintain. So I let the mixture cool for eight hours in the back of the fridge and then gave it a turn in the ice cream machine. After 25 minutes it wasn't really solidifying but it was getting lumpy and the bucket was running out of freeze so decided that was good enough and I put it into the freezer to ripen.

And the next day I scooped some out and gave it a try:

It has the mouth feel of premium ice cream without a hint of ice crystals, gumminess, insta-melt or the other ills sherbet is prone to proving again that bananas aren't as special as Alton Brown makes them out to be.

The flavors are muted at freezer temperatures but a couple minutes of warming brings them out intensely with not-quite-chocolate and pineapple at the front fading to a lingering not-quite-chocolate/coconut. The cocoa did a good job highlighting the chocolate-esque notes in the black sapote but it's still clearly cocoa plus tropical fruits. It's an interestingly unusual but quite pleasant combination. Actually, around here it's not so unusual; all the local confectioners use tropical fruits in their chocolates. It is unusual that I like it though. Let's see what my co-workers think.

CSA week eight - dulce de sapote negro sherbet

If you looked on the web at all to see what to do with the black sapote then you came across the recipe for dulce de sapote negro. At the end there's a note offering the option of freezing it for a sorbet which sounded like a good idea but I decided I wanted to make sherbet instead.

What exactly sherbet is is hard to pin down. The current usage of the word is local to the U.S. and quite new so it hasn't really settled down in either spelling or meaning. Sherbet occupies a middle ground between sorbet (frozen sweetened fruit juice and pulp) and ice cream (frozen flavored milk and cream). Sherbet recipes take sorbet and add milk or cream or egg yolks or egg whites.

Actually, adding milk or cream is a bad idea as it thins out the flavors and the solid ingredients hampering the freezing process. What you really want to do is to replace some of the liquid in a sorbet recipe (either water or juice). Adjusting an ice cream recipe to a sherbet is harder; I suppose replacing the cream with more fruit and sugar water might work, but that's hardly the same recipe.

Adding egg yolks makes sense as they add a fatty richness and thicken the fruit mix. Adding egg whites, on the other hand, is puzzling. They don't add any flavor or any richness. They might lighten a recipe but 1) alcohol does a much better job of lightening by working with the mechanical properties of ice crystals and 2) the texture of frozen egg whites is really unpleasant. Even odder, most recipes call for them to whipped before being put into the churn which is a perfectly designed meringue-destroying machine.

I've got a theory about this. There is a substantial minority of ice cream recipes that, instead of using an ice cream churn, call for folding the flavoring ingredients into whipped cream and then freezing. If you wanted to make a low fat version of this, substituting whipped egg whites for the whipped cream is a natural thing to try. Remember that without a churn, you just can't make sorbet. You can make granita but that's not nearly the same thing. If you want a light ice-cream like dish without a churn, there aren't many other options. I suspect that a tradition of making sherbet this way, separate from the dairy version, evolved but people forgot why they were adding the egg whites so the recipes didn't change when churns became readily and cheaply available. Anyway, that's what I figure.

But on to the recipe. Before I started researching egg white sherbets that was my plan. My previous attempt at a sapote frozen dessert turned out pretty dense and gritty. As it turned out, black sapotes and mamey sapotes are very different fruit (or possibly my mamey sapote was under-ripe and I'm lucky people couldn't get it out of the container considering the upset tummies it would have given them) and making sherbet with them had different requirements. Using the dulce recipe as a base I substituted in a cup of milk for a cup of the orange juice. I really wanted to do this instead of just freezing it into a sorbet because I wanted to reduce the orange flavor and let the mild sapote come through.

And, by the way, while the fruit pulp certainly looks like chocolate pudding, I really don't think people would be saying it tastes like chocolate if they were tasting it blindfolded. But I thought that about carob too so what do I know?

I made a few other changes to highlight the sapote. I used the more neutral lemon rind instead of orange rind. And I cut out some of the honey and used sugar instead. That also cut down a little on the water to help with the freezing. The vanilla I added as a grace note; it works well in the background to bring depth to tropical flavors. The rum I added for the usual reason; it reduces the size of the ice crystals and gives a smoother final product. In this case, the flavor of the rum matched beautifully with the other ingredients so I may have added a bit too much. You can see that in the not-very-thick churned result (or maybe not. My lighting has been awful recently). It didn't melt very quickly though so I'm hopeful that it will remain soft and retain the churned in air as it ripens in the freezer. I cut the rum down for the recipe, but you might boost it back up again.

One final note, you may have noticed the combination of citrus juice and dairy products and are wondering about curdling. The milk did, in fact, curdle a little, but that helps the thickening and the churning process breaks up the lumps so it worked out fine.


Dulce de Sapote Negro sherbet

Ingredients
4 small or 2 large black sapotes (very soft to ensure their ripeness)
1/4 cup light honey
1/8 cup raw sugar (adjust sweetness depending on how sweet your fruit ingredients are)
1 Tablespoon grated lemon rind
1 cup orange juice
1 cup milk
1 Tablespoon light rum
1 teaspoon vanilla

1. Remove stems from sapotes.
2. Pull off green skin with your fingers or the edge of a knife. It should come off easily in large chunks taking a little of the pulp with it. You now have a dark brown, thick pulp. Inside are hidden almond-shaped seeds.
3. Remove the seeds with your fingers.
4. In food processor, combine everything.
5. Pulse until mixed well.
6. Chill. Mixture is bright, shiny black-brown and slightly thickened.
7. Freeze in ice cream maker according to directions
8. Ripen overnight in the freezer.

So how does it taste? At least straight from the churn, you can identify the sapote, the orange, the honey and the rum in each bite but they all work together too. It's a nice chord of flavors but nothing synergistic.

The picture up top is the ripened final result. The flavor didn't change much, perhaps the rum is a little more pronounced. The texture stayed soft but looks a little grittier. It still melts smooth and milkily (not creamily given the lack of cream, obviously) on the tongue though so it's just cosmetic.

[Edit: I've got another black sapote sherbet recipe that's at least as good. Click here.]