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!

Fancy Pants Pop Tarts

I grew up in a sugar free household which meant that there was nothing I craved more than the sugar coated, melted toxic goodness of a pop tart. They were few and far between but damn, those were the best.

Today I decided to do a bit of a throwback to the good old pop tart but with the palate of an adult in mind.

Traditional pie crust:

• 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour 
• 2 sticks cold butter 
• 1 tsp salt 
• 1-2 tbs cold water

Mix the flour and salt together in a medium bowl. Chop the sticks of butter into nice little pieces and roll your sleeves up because it's about to get messy! Using your hands, massage the butter into the flour/salt mix. Once everything seems to be well blended but just barely held together, add 1/2 tbs of water and work into dough. Keep adding the water a little at a time until the dough feels like it is holding together without being sticky to the touch. 

 Roll out into a rectangle. Fold in the top and bottom of the rectangle so they touch in the middle. Proceed to fold in the sides. Flip the "envelop" you've just created, roll out into another rectangle and repeat two more times.

Folding away

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Roll out the dough until it is nice and thin. With a knife, slice the dough into rectangles, I made mine about 2" x 4".

 Filling:

• 1 cup jam (I used strawberry)
• 8 oz white chocolate
• 1/2 almonds pulverized! 

In a food processor, blend the almonds keeping a few chunks floating around. You can add your white chocolate to the food processor or you can chop the chocolate into very fine pieces. 

Large white chocolate bar sliced into little crumbs

  On half of our rectangles, place a tablespoon of jam in the center and spread out leaving a little room around the edge. Sprinkle almond and white chocolate mix on top of jam, sandwiching with a second rectangle.

Into the oven they go!

  Using a fork, pinch edges together and poke a few holes into the top.

Egg Wash:

• 1 Egg
• 2 tbs water

Whisk the egg and water together. Brush the tops of your tarts with the egg wash and pop them into the oven for 8-10 min until the tops are golden brown.

The Yellow teacup spies oozy goodness.

 Once the pop tarts are cool they are ready for some icing.

Icing:

• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup corn syrup
• 1 tsp water
• food coloring 

Mix all ingredients together until you get a nice thick mixture. If you want your icing to be a little more running, just add water a TINY bit at a time. Add some food coloring and you're ready to decorate.

Teacup approves of the cooling process

Yummy pink frosting for our strawberry pop tarts 

First bite of a fresh out of the oven fancy pants pop tarts

Cheers!

 A perfect mix of flaky crust, gooey jam, crunchy almonds, and sweet frosting on top. Adulthood is not too shabby!