Welcome to The Cherry On Top.
Have you been foraging this fall for food finds? I'm seeing a lot of pumpkins out in front yards either for sale or for free. There are still a few nuts to be found. The apples and pears are just about all rotten or picked by the birds. If you also live in a northern, chilly climate you may find other edible treasure out there.
We've got a very interesting tree that grows throughout our village and is our village's name sake. It is called a mispel (in Flemish). Mespilus germanica is the latin name. I'm not sure if there is an American or English language equivalent. The mispel is really unique in so many ways.
The only recipes I could find were a liquor and jelly. Boo! Let's change that!
The stature is really more bushy than it is tree like. I wouldn't say it is a pretty tree. The leaves are long and fingerlike. One of the best things about the mispel is that the fruit is ready when most other food is long gone. I picked a huge bucket of mispels and there were hardly any insects on them. Only an adorable lady bug and another beetle critter that was all black with a few yellow spots.
I didn't think to get a picture of the tree. I'll pop out and get one or two for ya. (There were no leaves! I'll take one, later.)
Above, you can see the fruit. The interesting part is you have to wait until the fruit is rotten. I know, right?! No wonder no one wants this tree in their yard. That might not be entirely true for every use, but it the lore in the village. So, I went with it. The oddity of it was fascinating.
If you're wanting to try one of these, I've got a few tips from my experience. I went for ones that were either on the ground or if they were on the tree, I chose the ones that were a bit squishy. Below, you can see the progression of rot. Each stage tastes different. That lighter green is really, really hard and the one dark one on the end is totally mushy inside and that's what ya want.
In the recipes I read, they used another process that I'm not at all crazy about and that's putting the fruit through a food mill. For me, that's totally ugh. I used it once to make current jam because of all of the little seeds and stems. I thought it was a ton of work and I hardly had anything left at the end to work with.
My process is mega simple, but it is tedious. You only need a small, sharp knife. I used a tiny cutting board and had a few containers for the good stuff and for all of the crap. By crap I mean the outer skin and the FIVE HUGE pits inside. It doesn't leave you with all of that much "meat", if ya know what I mean.
It was a lot of work, but I was just so curious. It took me about one minute per piece of fruit. I put on some tunes and heated up a lovely cup of herbal tea to make the process more tolerable. I also sat on a stool half way through the process and I did one large pot over two days. (About an hour each day.)
The size of the fruit is roughly the size of a plum or maybe a lime. The consistency is a bit like a fig, in my opinion. The taste...that's a tough one to explain. It is totally unique! Hehehe...The closest thing I can think of is indeed, an apple, but it's also a touch sour or maybe pungent?
Cut the fruit in half. Remove the 5 large seeds.
My goodness! I hope you are not put off yet. My explanation sounds nearly dreadful. So, I guess I better keep moving on and get to the awesome part.
Scrape the meat off the seeds if there is some. Squish out the meat and remove with the knife.
You can see the size of my pot. It holds roughly, 2 full cups of the fruit. My cake was beyond delicious.
There's a look at the cake. I also used the mispel mush in oatmeal along with some fresh apple. I think the fruit is mega versatile. I'd use it with just about any other non citrus fruit. A banana might balance out the flavor perfectly. I'll let ya know, soon.
Freezing them is also in the near future. If I can get around to preparing the fruit, again before it actually does rot. I only came across one piece of fruit that really was rotten. It was black and most unappetizing. Taste the flesh to see if it's just right? You can just eat it right off of the tree, apparently. Of course, you must discard the skin and seed.
I recently made the most delicious wine mountain peach butter and I plan on using what I've got left of the mispel flesh for another tiny batch of mispel butter. Here's a recipe similar to the peach butter I made that you could use for your mispels. Use mispels in yogurt, smoothies, pancakes, on toast with some cinnamon...
Pairing it up with cinnamon is perfect. I'm thinking pumpkin would be a great combination as well. How about sweetening it with maple syrup? Mmmmm....I used honey, cinnamon, apple and mispel for my oatmeal and if you're not a Cherry groupie you may not know that I sauté my fruit in butter when I make oatmeal. Next time, raisins or dried cranberries in there?
For the cake, I used a recipe for oatmeal apple cake and just switched out the 1 1/2 of cups of apple with the mispel mush. I added walnuts that I also collected right next to the mispel tree.
What are you baking this winter? Anything unique as mispel cake?
Thanks for hanging with The Cherry.
Happy baking!
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