Decadent CHOCOLATE Guanábana Pie… (With No Bake Option!)

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What happens when chocolate meets guanábana? Let’s find out! This week, I am sharing with you my recipe for a tasty, tropical, chocolate guanábana pie!

It combines that floral, sweet flavor of guanábana with CHOCOLATE into a smooth, rich, creamy, DECADENT pie! You’ve got to give this one a try!

What is guanábana?

This tropical fruit is one of the many different fruits that we grow here at Cold River Homestead, and this one is a favorite of ours! It also goes by the names soursop, graviola, Brazilian pawpaw, or custard apple.

Have you ever tasted it? Wikipedia describes it as follows:

“With an aroma similar to pineapple,[5] the flavor of the fruit has been described as a combination of strawberries and apple with sour citrus flavor notes, contrasting with an underlying thick creamy texture reminiscent of banana.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soursop

It is commonly used in fruit smoothies here in Costa Rica, either blended in water or milk with a little sugar. However, with its complexity of flavor and banana-like texture, it is an excellent choice for baking as well!

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How to process guanábana

Now, if you have ever processed guanábana, it, well, takes a bit of finessing. Its texture can make it a bit difficult to extract the seeds. After numerous attempts to improve the process over the years (and some nasty hand-cramps to go with it), I have fallen in LOVE with my two-fork technique! With this approach, I can speedily process a large guanábana in mere minutes with ease! Since the technique reminds me of the Southern US technique of making pulled pork, I call it my “pulled pork technique.” 😂

Check out my awesome, super simple hack for processing guanábana!

Now, to use the pulp in this pie, we need BOTH the solid and the liquid part of the pulp. If you have ever worked with guanábana before, you will know that the solid portion of the guanábana will separate away a bit from the liquid. For this pie, use both parts in their approximately normal ratio amounts coming out of processing.

If you have frozen your pulp, that also works great as well! Just thaw, stir it back together, and then scoop out a regular blend of solids and liquid to use for the pie.

Ok, got your guanábana pulp ready? Let’s make ourselves a pie!

Let’s talk crust!

I make a chocolate graham cracker crust for this pie, but if you have another favorite you prefer, feel free to use it! Maybe you like regular graham cracker, or oreo, or even a nut crust! Go with what you like!

Now, the most common type of graham crackers here that I routinely see are made by Tosh:

These come as 30 gram packs, containing 3 crackers that are around 2 x 4 inches long. I use 6 packs to make this pie…. for a total of 180 grams of crackers, which along with the sugar and cocoa powder give me 2 cups of the graham cracker crumb mixture for this 9 inch pie.

If you are using the graham crackers that are more typically found in North America, they tend to come as “full sheets,” like those found in this stack of graham crackers. Each sheet weighs around 14 grams, so you would need around 11 or 12 “full sheets” to make this crust.

No bake option for my chocolate guanábana pie!

I pre-bake my crust in this recipe, but if you don’t have an oven or prefer not to use one, you could instead make small pies or pie cups in small bowls or containers like this:

Supplies needed for pie prep

To make this pie, you will need the following ingredients:

• guanábana pulp (fresh or frozen & thawed)
• sugar (I use turbinado sugar for this pie)
• milk
• cocoa powder
• salt
• cornstarch
• vanilla extract
• graham crackers (if making my chocolate graham cracker crust)
• salted butter (if making my chocolate graham cracker crust)

You will also need the following pieces of kitchen equipment:

• blender
• food processor (big or small)
• oven (unless using my no-bake option)
• 9 inch pie plate (or 8 or 9 inch square baking pan or try my no-bake option)
• small saucepan

Supplies assembled? Let’s make our chocolate guanábana pie!

Check out my instructional video to see how I make my chocolate guanábana pie! Remember that you can also activate captions in either English or Spanish.

Where to find guanábana

If you live in an area where guanábana is not grown, there are several places that sell frozen guanábana! Look for guanábana a.k.a. soursop pulp or purée in the frozen section of your Latin grocery stores. Goya sells frozen soursop pulp that is available around the world.

There are also options for soursop fruit purées stored at room temperature. Amazon even sells soursop pulp!

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