On the East Coast, winter gardens and growing spaces are asleep, locked in cold, and bleakly grey, with bare-branched brown relief. Botanical life has been halted by frost. The only local fare around is the succession of apples and pears that come to market, brought in and out of cold storage since fall. Despite the cheerless outlook, these early months of the year bring a subtropical fruit to ripeness—just not on this coast: It is cherimoya season in California. Fattening among their large, lush leaves, they are available countrywide by the boxful at the click of a mouse. Every February I escape online to order a boxful from Rincon Tropics in Carpinteria (where the first cherimoya seeds were planted in 1871), and about a week later it is at our doorstep.
In frigid February, the cherimoyas are a brief, delicious dive into what seasons mean in this climactically diverse country; they are local, not to frozen New York, obviously, but to that other shore, and another way of late-winter life and harvest.
Photography by Marie Viljoen.

Probing carefully in their boxed nest of shredded brown paper, my fingers discover the heavy fruit and lift them out. The cherimoyas resemble—like a Rorschach test—sleeping armadillos, curled tight; the squat hearts of cartoon alligators; green grenades; or algal clay orbs marked by the careful thumbprints of their maker. They are sometimes called ice cream fruit—protected by their leathery shell, their white flesh is creamily sweet, juicy, and fragrant.
I do see cherimoyas at local supermarkets, but fitfully. Their prices are in the $7.99 to $12.99 range per pound, and it’s hard to tell how they have been treated. They ripen erratically and sometimes unevenly, if they have been refrigerated for a long time. (At this time of year their soursop cousins appear at Caribbean markets, and I have made snowy treks across Prospect Park to the Little Caribbean neighborhood of Brooklyn to find those at Labay Market, whose owner flies his fruit in from his farm in Grenada. They are enormous, and good.)

The trove from Rincon Tropics is a gift to myself. These cherimoyas are grown by the Brown family—Tony Brown was the first to cultivate them commercially in the United States, about 50 years ago, and they are shipped to customers by his son, Nick Brown, who pivoted from farmers’ markets to mail-order during the first months of the COVID pandemic. They ripen (like avocados) a few days after arrival and are in season for another two to three months.
A large box (four to five hefty fruit) of cherimoyas from Rincon Tropics is $50.

Cherimoyas ripen at room temperature, and are sweet when the stem-end yields to the pressure of a gentle thumb. At that point they can be chilled for a few days if you can’t eat them at once. After eating the first ripe fruit straight up, with a spoon, I settle into the task of removing the seeds from the rest, to make an annual, memorably good cherimoya granita.
Their flavor varies from cultivar to cultivar. Generally, ripe cherimoya are intensely sweet and so juicy that moisture pools in the shell as you scoop out the soft flesh. The sweetness is made more interesting by some lemon-sherbert edges and a delicately tropical funk, near the pear-grained perimeter.

Botanically, cherimoyas are Annona cherimola, and are considered native to Andean South America, although it is possible that their origins are Mesoamerican. Time and evolving science will tell. Regardless, cherimoyas were eaten and cultivated by the Incas, and depicted on pottery that predates them. The fruit belong to the same Annonoceae family as custard apples, soursops, and sweet sops (also called sugar apples)—all sharing dimpled or knobbly green skin, with white flesh and big seeds; as well as to the native Eastern North American pawpaw, whose smooth skin hides apricot flesh and the same glossy seeds.
Looking at the center of a split cherimoya recently, I was struck by the fruits’ visual similarity to the closed seedpods of magnolias, and especially to the large southern magnolia. It turns out they are distant cousins, both belonging to the order Magnoliales.





Granita is a more rustic, crystalline version of sorbet. It’s like eating fruit-laden snowflakes. There is no churning and no special equipment—just a dish in which to freeze the purée and a fork to scratch up those crystals. It’s often what I turn to when I want to showcase superb seasonal fruit, but with minimal effort and fuss. (And also when I can’t squeeze my ice cream maker’s bowl into our way-too-skinny freezer.)
Cherimoya Granita
Serves 8
This cherimoya granita makes an elegant dessert. Served in a coupe glass, it is a light flourish with a complex flavor. It converts into a decadent digestíf with the addition of an ounce of apple-redolent Calvados poured into the glass a second before you serve it. A high class slushy? For the juice, I like Meyer lemon, since it is gentle. But every sour citrus has a flavor profile that will bring to the granita its own, very acceptable character.
And fear not, this recipe can accommodate just one fruit, too. You just need one tablespoon of fresh lemon juice per cup of cherimoya pulp.
- 3 ripe cherimoyas (about 2 ¾ cups pulp, without seeds)
- 3 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice
To serve:
- Zest of 1 clementine (or orange, or Meyer lemon)), microplaned
Slit or split your ripe cherimoyas. Using a teaspoon, pop out the visible seeds and scoop the creamy pulp into a bowl. Use your (clean) fingers to work through the pulp for any stray seeds. You do not want even one to be pulverized into the purée (like those of pawpaw—and apple, for that matter—cherimoya seeds are mildly toxic).
Transfer the pulp into the bowl of a food processor, with the lemon juice. Whizz until it is smooth—about 15 seconds. (You can also work the pulp through a sieve, using the back of a wooden spoon.) Pour the purée into a shallow bowl. Cover, and freeze. Remove the dish 5 minutes before you need to serve the granita—a slight defrosting makes it easier to scratch up the crystals. Use a fork to cross-hatch the frozen purée, scraping first in one direction, and then across it. Scoop the gathering crystals into a small serving bowl or coupe. Top each mountain of frozen fluff with a little clementine zest and serve at once. Calvados optional.
See also:
- Healthy Candy: Dried Naked Citrus Is Your New Addictive Snack
- Tepache: An Easy, Fizzy Probiotic Drink to Make at Home
- Pawpaw: A Native Fruit that Tastes Like the Tropics
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