After ordering a box of a new-to-me tropical fruit called black sapote and tasting it on its own, I baked two desserts using its creamy brown flesh, one of which was the Black Sapote Bread With Orange Glaze pictured above.
Before I write about those treats, though, I'll write about the fruit itself, which, as the headline indicates, is also known as chocolate pudding fruit. And I'll get the disappointing part of this post out of the way: Black sapote (which from now on will be shortened to the unfortunate abbreviation BS) doesn't taste anything like chocolate. It looks like and has a similar mouthfeel to chocolate pudding when it's ripe, but its very mild flavor isn't reminiscent of chocolate at all. I also found the flesh of this persimmon that's native to Mexico and Central America to be only slightly sweet. So while spooning out the dark brown, custardy pulp was a fun food experience, BS doesn't deliver on its nickname in one essential way—especially for a chocoholic like me.
And to be fair to Miami Fruit, the company I bought the BSes from, its website (at the first link above) doesn't promise the fruit tastes like chocolate. It correctly says BS "has a light flavor with a rich texture."
You can find many people online, however, insisting BS tastes JUST LIKE CHOCOLATE PUDDING. Those people are full of the other kind of BS. Or when they tried it, they were high on something that altered their sensation of taste. Or maybe unbeknownst1 to them, someone else had mixed the pulp with cocoa powder and some kind of sweetener before serving it to them.
As I've mentioned on the blog before, my husband is adept at picking up and identifying subtle flavors in foods and wines. He didn't taste2 any chocolate.
The fruit arrived in great shape on Nov. 17. I didn't weigh the contents, but my large box should have held around 10 pounds of BSes. There were two layers of fruit, so what you see in the photo above is about half the mass of it. As you can also see, the fruits were of different sizes.
I didn't think to note the date when the last BS ripened, but I would say it was about two weeks after the box arrived. You can refrigerate the ripened fruit to help preserve them, and I did so with several of the later-ripening ones.
I also gave some away to friends, who were by and large meh about them and, in some cases, turned off by the appearance and texture of the ripe fruit. Thankfully, the BSes were on different ripening schedules, so I wasn't overwhelmed with a bunch of need-to-eat-soon fruits at the same time.
I had ordered the fruit back in May or, more precisely, I had made a reservation for the fruit then. I bought the BSes then because, I'm fairly certain, Miami Fruit had incorrectly listed the fruit on its What's in Season page. My credit card was charged two days later. When I saw the charge on my monthly statement, I called the company to see what the deal was. I was told my card was charged to reserve my delivery. I could get a refund, but I would be taken off the list of people who would receive the fruit when it was in season.
I don't like that policy. Taking my credit card info to reserve a spot was entirely reasonable, but a retailer—or a hotel or rental car company, etc.—doesn't typically charge the customer until the order is being fulfilled or the service is being provided. Still, I really wanted to try chocolate pudding fruit, so I didn't ask for a refund.
Ripe BSes are olive green or brown all over, and they have the texture of a squishy pillow when you pick them up or poke at them. Like astringent persimmons, BSes shouldn't be consumed before they're completely ripe. (That's a quarter off to the right for size comparison.)
The fruits have very large seeds, and they're situated in little membranes I took to calling seed condoms. The flesh contains more than six times the daily value of vitamin C and also delivers a significant amount of fiber.
I knew I wanted to attempt a Black Sapote Brownie, and I found an appealing recipe by a native-Floridian blogger named Suwannee Rose. At the same time, I had been looking at a Black Sapote Bread recipe at The Travel Bite. (There aren't a tremendous number of recipes that use BSes in baked goods online.)
I went with the brownie recipe first, and in retrospect, I wish I had made it a second time. But Tony and I ended up enjoying my second attempt at the BS Bread so much, I used the last of my ripe fruit in a third loaf I've stored in the freezer for Christmas.
I omitted the chocolate chips from the recipe (which is in the linked post above at Suwannee Rose, in case you hadn’t already assumed that) because I wanted to experience the blend of BS pulp and cocoa on their own, without the intrusion of another source of chocolate flavor. Tony and I enjoyed the brownies, especially my sweetie, but I think we would have liked them even more if I'd included the chocolate chips.
The brownies were also more cakelike than Suwannee Rose’s appear to be in her gorgeous photos. The recipe calls for a cup of regular all-purpose flour “or all-purpose, gluten-free baking mix.” As it turned out, I had on hand a box of APGFBM that was past its best-by date, so I took that substitution suggestion to heart and used the baking mix in place of the flour so I could avoid having to throw it out when it was even more past its best-by date.
That paragaph of explication leads me to a complaint about the recipe in terms of making it GF: I haven’t come across a brand of APGFBM that doesn’t contain baking powder, so I think Suwannee Rose should have noted that if you’re using APGFBM, you must omit the baking powder (which I did).
Alternatively, the recipe could have called for a GF flour replacer, which will inevitably have some variation on 1-to-1, 1-for-1, cup-for-cup, etc. in its brand name. This substitute for regular AP flour contains various alternative flours and starches (usually white and brown rice flours and potato and tapioca starches) plus xanthan gum, which stands in for the gluten. The 1-to-1 product doesn't contain baking powder, so that ingredient would still be needed.
I have one other issue with the recipe: Mixing the baking powder into the melted butter or coconut oil while it's warmer than room temperature seems counterintuitive. Because baking powder starts to react in the presence of heat and moisture, it's typically mixed in with other dry ingredients and then stirred into the wet ingredients just before the batter goes into the pan.
Now, maybe Suwannee Rose wanted that reaction to start earlier so the brownies wouldn't rise as much in the oven and would be fudgier than the rather cakey, though still very moist, ones I ended up with. Anyway, I never followed the recipe exactly, so I'll stop with my complaining and say I'm glad I found it and was able to successfully use it with only minor changes.
When I made the BS Bread the first time, I had only one smallish fruit that was ripe. It yielded about 1/2 cup of pulp, so that's what I used in the recipe. And that's one gripe I have with this recipe: Its writer, Rachelle Lucas, says to use one ripe sapote without giving any idea of the volume of fruit flesh or the size of the fruit.
My other gripe is that the ingredients aren't in the same order in the list as they are in the instructions. In the list, egg is third and sugar is eighth and last; in the instructions, sugar is third and egg is fifth.
I thought about adding some cocoa or chocolate chips but opted for closely following the recipe other than subsituting APGFBM for the AP flour and baking soda. I applaud Lucas's decision to double the amount of vanilla from her source recipe: this one-bowl Banana Bread recipe at Simply Recipes. I enjoyed the blend of vanilla and black sapote flavors; the bread tasted somewhat of caramel to me. Tony said the bread tasted like angel food cake (though with a very different texture) and thought orange zest would have been a welcome addition.
The texture was mostly good, but I took it out of the oven too soon, before the 1 hour called for in the recipe was up. I can imagine Paul Hollywood running his index finger along the not-quite-done area and saying, "You can see it's oonderbaked."
On my next attempt, I chose to embrace the source recipe and used 1 1/2 cups of BS pulp. I also added 1/4 teaspoon of allspice because I thought that spice—which Tony has been using a good deal in his cooking lately—would work well with the BS and vanilla.
We enjoyed the bread solo, but it was even better after, at Tony's urging, I drizzled it with an Orange Glaze. (That recipe also gives the ingredients in two different orders, though with only three of them—and only one instructional step—it's hard to get confused.) The allspice could have been stronger; I had been hesitant to use too much because I didn't want the bread to be an allspice bomb. And there could have been more glaze; a lot of it soaked into the cake.
When I made the bread the third time, I increased the allspice to 1/2 teaspoon. I didn't have quite enough APGFBM, so I completed filling my final 1/2-cup measure with GF flour (not the 1-to-1 kind) and added pinches of xanthan gum and baking powder. I also didn't have enough refined coconut oil, so I replaced some of it with canola oil.
I put the loaf in the freezer unglazed, but I have a fresh navel orange to make the glaze with when we're ready to eat the BS Bread.
All in all, I'm glad I splurged on the BSes, but I don't see myself springing for another box of them. I'd rather try one of Miami Fruit's other offerings. If someone with a BS tree gave me some of the fruit, I'd make the brownies again, with chocolate chips.
1Unbeknownst is one of those words, like nondescript, whose opposite is never used, is considered to be archaic, or isn’t considered to be an actual word.
2I acknowledge that what we taste in a given food or drink can be subjective. But I imagine there must also be a way to determine through chemical testing whether any compounds that lend chocolate its flavor are found in this fruit.