Chocolate Tahini Pawpaw Bread
I found this gold and ivory tea set at an estate sale and I couldn’t resist it because it reminded me of Chip and Mrs. Potts from Beauty and the Beast. Seen here in warmer times.
Not to be like, “hey, y’all! Welcome back to my channel!” but um, hey, y’all, welcome back to my channel. I took a couple years off working on Domestic Demigoddess for a variety of reasons I’ll probably detail here and there but basically: my life changed a lot. I bought a house. I got engaged. I planted a garden. I got married. My family business grew a lot. I lost my job. My dog went blind. I had a very minor cancer scare. I got diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder and spend huge swaths of my spare time trying to get better. I am a radically different person in so many ways than I was the last time I wrote anything for fun. I was so, so busy being so, so busy with Everything, Everywhere, All At Once Forever (this is actually the name of the sequel) that everything I like doing fell by the wayside.
I kept wanting to return to writing for myself, kept wanting to share the recipes I develop and the recipes I simply crib from Nigella and alter slightly, kept wanting to do something that wasn’t immediately remunerative or productive, but then something came up. I thought there would be a perfect moment when the conditions were right and I’d be able to sit down and just write and what I have learned in the past 2.9 years is that if you wait for the right moment, you’ll wait forever. Ready is not, as you might have been lead to believe, a feeling. It’s a decision.
So today, as I am snowed into my house, I’ve decided I’m ready.
Late last summer, I met and befriended a local microgreens grower who is also a wildlife biologist and conservationist. I tried to buy some mushrooms from him and he asked me what they were for and I told him khinkhali and he told me that he did his doctoral research outside Tbilisi. He was so stoked that I promised to bring him some back the next week and when I did, he hugged them to his chest like a child.
Thus began a very intense gifting war between us, which is how we got to where we are today: chocolate tahini pawpaw bread.
For those of you who do not know, a pawpaw is a wild fruit native to Appalachia. The flavor and texture to a banana but like, also not. They look a little bit like a mango, but when you slice into them, they have several dozen seeds that are all about the size of an almond. Once off the tree, you’ve got about three days to eat them before they rot. I love them, and other people are catching on, too.
When I brought Tommy the biologist/microgreens guy one of my weekly offerings, he handed me a whole-ass five-gallon bucket of pawpaws whilst grinning like a maniac. With about 36 hours on the clock, I decided to make a truly heroic amount of banana-ish bread.
I had seen Nigella’s recipe for something like this somewhere and I flipped through about six books before Googling and finding out it was a website exclusive. Without further ado, here's my very Appalachian take on a classic. I’m glad to be back.
It is indeed a homely little quick bread, in both the English and American usage of that word.
Chocolate-Tahini Pawpaw Bread
adapted from Nigella.com
makes about ten really nice slices
Ingredients
8-10 very ripe pawpaws (comes to about ¾ cup mashed), removed from their skins and deseeded
1/4 cup/60mL vegetable oil
1/4 cup/50 grams tahini
1 large egg at room temperature
1/4 cup/150 grams either finely ground Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Foods smoked bourbon sugar OR caster sugar
3 tablespoons/135 grams dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract or inexpensive bourbon
1/2 cup/60 grams rice flour (for our gluten-free girlies) or AP flour (if this isn’t an issue for you)
3 tablespoons/25 grams cocoa
¼ teaspoon fine sea salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup/100 grams dark chocolate chips
1-2 teaspoons sesame seeds for sprinkling (I like a mix of black and white for visual reasons; choose whatever path your heart indicates)
To Do:
Preheat the oven to 170°C/325°F. Grease an 8.5x4x2.5 loaf pan and line it with parchment. To be extra safe, why not spray a little bit of Pam on the parchment? If you’re using a neutral oil and there’s no standing oil in the dish, you’re just being diligent, not overzealous.
In a big bowl, mash your pawpaws with a potato masher. This is your last chance to find one of the seeds so use it wisely. In this order, beat in the tahini, oil, egg, bourbon sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla/bourbon. If you have one, this is a good use of a stand mixer with the beater attachment set to low. If not, congrats on doing arm day at home.
In a second bowl, work your dry ingredients together: flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt. In stages (I use a half cup measuring cup), mix this in to the wet mixture (sorry). Take care not to overmix. What does that mean? I’ve never had a working definition, but like pornography, I know it when I see it. Basically, do it until it’s not streaky but not much more.
Gently fold in your chocolate.
With a spatula and great care, pour your batter into the greasy tin that awaits you. Once it’s all set in there, use your spatula to smooth the top, then sprinkle your sesame seeds on it.
Gather several cake testers; this is a recipe that calls for their liberal use as it will look done-ish far before its time. Place it in the oven and cook for about 45 minutes. Check on it and see if the tester comes out clean. Mine needed ten to fifteen extra minutes every time I made it and I checked on it every five.
Remove it from the oven and let it rest until completely cool on the rack. In Nigella’s original recipe, she recommends removing it from the tin then wrapping in parchment anew, then in foil, then letting it wait for a day and only then eating it. The first time I made this, I barely waited until it was cool to devour it and it was good. The third and fourth loaves were given this treatment. I’m sorry to say it is significantly better.