Who doesn’t love chocolate pudding? Don’t get me wrong, tropical fruit is amazing, too, but anything involving chocolate definitely makes the mouth water. Now just imagine, what if you could have a tropical fruit that looked and tasted like chocolate pudding?
Native to Mexico and Central America, Diospyros nigra, better known as black sapote or chocolate pudding fruit, is a species of persimmon that resembles a flattened tomato but looks like chocolate pudding when cut open. Although the unripe fruit has bright green skin, a ripe black sapote will be brownish and somewhat squished and shriveled. The flesh of a perfectly ripe black sapote is dark brown with a creamy texture similar to avocado or papaya. Many say that its flavor is similar to a low-sugar chocolate pudding or chocolate whipped cream, with notes of honey and caramel, but the sweetness isn’t apparent until the aftertaste. The Guardian described it as the “not-quite-chocolate-pudding fruit.”
In addition to its dessert-like taste, black sapote is packed with nutritional benefits, including antioxidants. Black sapote is particularly rich in vitamins A and C. In fact, a serving of black sapote has three times as much vitamin C as an orange! The fruit is also a good source of calcium, phosphorus and fiber.
When very ripe, the flesh can be scooped out with a spoon and eaten immediately. Alternatively, it can be used in frozen desserts and baking (it makes a particularly good substitute for banana in a banana bread recipe.
Not quite chocolate pudding, but close:
- Also called black soap apple, black sapote is not closely related to other fruits called sapote, including the mamey sapote and white sapote.
- The Aztecs are credited with spreading the black sapote around Central America. Spanish colonists brought the fruit to the Caribbean, Indonesia, and parts of the Philippines. Today, the fruit is also cultivated in Hawaii and South Florida.
- Unripe black sapote has white flesh and is completely inedible, with an extremely bitter and sour taste.
