One writer's autumn obsession: the perfect pawpaw ice cream

Sam O'Brien has a very specific seasonal ritual. When the weather turns and fall settles in, she thinks about pawpaws—a fruit that grows wild across the Eastern United States and tastes, improbably, like banana crossed with mango and durian had a tropical baby.

Last year, O'Brien wrote about pawpaws and tested several recipes. Most dishes were fine. But ice cream was different. The fruit's natural creaminess and tropical notes seemed to belong in a bowl. So when autumn came around again, she decided to push further.

The mission was simple: create a pawpaw ice cream that actually tasted like pawpaw, with a custard base silky enough to do the fruit justice. The obstacle was less simple. Pawpaws are notoriously difficult to grow commercially, which means foraging is the only reliable way to find them. O'Brien headed to her nearest pawpaw grove and found it already picked clean.

Then luck intervened. A trip to the Shawangunk Mountains led her to a Catskills nursery with a basket overflowing with fresh pawpaws—the kind of serendipity that makes a project feel meant to happen.

The experiment

With fruit in hand, O'Brien pureed and froze the pulp, then started the real work. She adapted a traditional vanilla custard ice cream recipe, adding 1.5 cups of pawpaw puree and ribbons of pawpaw-flavored caramel. The result arrived almost perfect: tropical and delicately floral, with vanilla notes underneath and a smooth, creamy texture that the custard base delivered.

Almost perfect. The caramel had cooked off most of the pawpaw flavor, leaving her with a lesson for next time: let the mixture cool before adding the fruit puree. This is how home cooking actually works—not failure, but iteration.

O'Brien is pleased enough with the result to make it official. This Christmas, her family's pie à la mode will have a new flavor. A fruit that grows wild and tastes like nothing else, turned into something that tastes like autumn, one bowl at a time.