Original Recipe: Paw Paw Cheesecake

Autumn is my favorite season. I get giddy as soon as I inhale that first cool whiff of crisp fallen leaves and smoke. Autumn brings physical beauty as well as a collection of truly delicious seasonal themed recipes. Like many autumn fanatics I find myself craving the traditional flavors of this wonderful season, delectable pumpkin, apple and spice flavors find their way into anything and everything I consume. But there is one fruit that is ripe around late September and free for the picking and that fruit is the paw paw! 

And what, you may ask, are paw paws exactly? Well, the Ohio Paw Paw festival offers an excellent description on their website: 

The pawpaw (Asimina triloba) is North America's largest native tree fruit. The fruit has a wonderful creamy texture and a tropical flavor. Southern Ohio is home to some of the largest and best tasting wild pawpaw patches on the planet. The pawpaw is also super nutritious and historically significant. Come wander the hills and discover why George Washington's favorite dessert was chilled pawpaw.

These little paw paws pack quite the fragrant punch. Just transporting them from tree to kitchen left my car smelling like paw paws for a few days (I would not recommend a paw paw flavored air freshener).

For the crust:

2 cups crushed gingersnap cookies

6 tbs unsalted butter

For the cheesecake

3 8oz packages of room temperature cream cheese

1 1/4 cup sugar

1 cup paw paw puree

2/3 cup sour cream

4 eggs

powdered sugar and raspberries for decoration

Preheat oven to 325°F. 

First take the gingersnap cookies and pulverize them until the crumbs have the consistency of sand. I used a food processor but a Ziploc bag and a rolling pin will also do the trick. 

Dump your gingersnap sand into a bowl. Put your 6 tablespoons into a microwave safe bowl and put that into the microwave for about 30 seconds or until the butter is just melted. Pour the melted butter over the gingersnap sand and, using your hands, mix together until the mixture can stay together when pinched. 

Using a 9" springform pan, gently press the crust into the middle and slightly up the sides. Make sure to keep the layer even. Bake crust for 10 min. 

While the crust is baking, it's time to get down and dirty with the paw paws. So, as I mentioned before, this things are smelly! They are also very challenging to peal as the majority of what is inside them are seeds. Imagine a mango but instead of having one large seed that you can scrape around, you have 6-8 seeds, depending on the paw paw. Allow to cool. 

The technique I started to develop by paw paw number four, was to peel off large chunks of the skin with a knife and then take spoon and scrape off the skin. When it came to the seeds I would use the "milkmaid" approach by literally wringing out each seed with my hand. There is a lot of effort involved but if you want a unique flavor, sometimes you've gotta work for it.

Once you have removed as much of the paw paw meat as physically possible, puree the fruit using a food processor or blender. You won't be using a lot of the fruit, so I went with my small food processor. Once the food is nice and smooth, run through a sieve to make sure you don't have small chunks of paw paw seed floating around your cheesecake.

Using a mixer, beat the cream cheese, sugar, and sour cream until light and fluffy. Slow the mixer down and add the eggs one at a time, making sure to beat well before adding the next egg. Finally, add paw paw puree.

Scrape down the sides of the bowl to make sure there are no lingering clumps of ingredients. Pour cheesecake batter into springform pan and pop that into the oven. Bake cheesecake for 1 hour. After the hour, turn the oven off and leave cheese cake in there for 30-45min. or until the cheesecake is slightly brown around the edges. To test if the cheesecake is done, gently shake the pan. The cake should have some movement so don't be alarmed if the cake still looks raw. As long as the sides are stiff with some movement in the middle, you should be good to go.

Let cheesecake cool in the fridge, preferably overnight. Decorate cake with raspberries and sprinkle with powdered sugar. Slice off a piece of that Paw paw cheesecake and enjoy.

A close up of the finished product

Presenting the paw paw cheesecake with raspberries and gingersnap crust!