Ripe Custard Apple

I blipped the fruit on 13 December and promised to show a ripe one within a week, he-he, stupid me. Old Manda, our gardener, told me they will only start ripening in February, and how right he was!! Read more about it on my blip of 13 December.

The African Pride, which is the species we have here, is a medium sized, well shaped 500g to 800g fruit. It is delicious. I could not wait to finish the shoot, so I can eat the fruit. It is our very first ripe one for the season!

I tried to illustrate it all to you! The whole fruit in the picture is not completely ripe yet but I needed a near ripe one to complete the illustration. Note the yellowing between the segments, when ripe, it cracks open, by then the fruit is very soft already, I prefer to pick them before that happens, to prevent it from being attacked by bugs. At this stage they ripen within a day or two in the house.

Note the segments inside the ripe one, they are very soft and each segment contains a big black seed, I arranged some segments on the plate and separated them a bit where they are still attached to the skin in the background.

The soft flesh is scraped out of the piece of skin in front. The piece on the left side of the picture still contains quite a lot of flesh.