15 Fruits That Taste Like Dessert

Fruit may be nature’s candy, but it can also be a lot like ice cream, pudding, caramel or chocolate. If you love dessert but want to make it fruit, we’ve put together a list that will satisfy any sweet tooth.

Black Sapote
This tropical fruit, cultivated throughout Mexico, Central America and Colombia, is known for its strikingly similar flavor to chocolate pudding. Its creamy, cocoa colored flesh makes it even more convincing. 

Cotton Candy Grape
It’s like pure, spun sugar in fresh, crispy grapes! This variety of grape is relatively new, and crosses sweet concord grapes with common green grapes. The result is a candy-like fruit with more naturally occurring sugar than your standard grape. 

Blue Java Bananas
One bite into one of these blue-hued beauties and you’ll be hooked. Their ice creamy texture and sweet vanilla flavor will make them your new favorite banana. In Hawaii, blue java bananas are also known as ice cream bananas!

Cherimoya
To know ripe cherimoya is to love it. Biting into a chilly, ripe cherimoya is a lot like eating a satisfying dessert of peachy-pear and pineapple custard. This tropical beauty looks like a green, heart shaped dino egg with a beautiful pattern of divots that look like scales. 

Jackfruit
Often confused with durian, jackfruit is a big ol’ fruit that tastes sweet and juicy like fruity bubble gum. It includes complex flavors of banana and pineapple that make it perfect as a standalone dessert, or added to cakes and confections.

Fuyu Persimmon
Few fruits are as sweet and jammy as a beautifully ripened persimmon. Some folks even like to remove the green stem and leaves and scoop the fruit from the thin peel with a spoon! The flavor is uniquely persimmon, with hints of sweet dates and honey. 

Lucuma
Lucuma is a sweet superfood that’s earned the nickname “Gold of the Incas”. Inside, the buttery gold flesh is both starchy and incredibly sweet. Imagine mangos, bananas and dates coalescing into one nutritious, dessert-worthy fruit.

Sapodilla Fruit
Malty brown sugar flavors with the juicy texture of ripe pear is why sapodilla makes our dessert fruit list. For those who adore near-cloying sweetness in their after dinner treats, the sapodilla fruit really delivers!

Pawpaw
Even though pawpaw grows natively in North America, the flavor packs a tropical flavored punch! The orange flesh of the pawpaw fruit has a smooth, custardy texture that’s satisfyingly rich. It’s flavor is compared to a mango, melon, and banana-berry mashup. 

Barhi Dates
Sticky, sweet and butterscotchy, barhi dates will satisfy the most stubborn sweet tooth. Whether fresh or dried, barhi dates are known for their complex flavors of dark brown sugar with a creamy consistency.

Mamey Sapote
The mamey sapote has deep orangey-red flesh with a consistency similar to an avocado. Enjoying this sweet fruit is like nature’s cheesecake! The flavor is uniquely tropical, even somewhat spicy with hints of nut flavors. Simply slice one of these fruits onto a plate with no extra fuss, and dessert is served!

Canistel
With a nickname like egg fruit, canistel might not sound so sweet. But this fruit, when nice and ripe, is often compared to the flavor of custard. Also known as yellow sapote, it’s loved on its own or blended into creamy desserts.

Inga Bean
Beans for dessert? Heck yeah. These long pods cradle the softest, fluffiest fruit we can think of. They look like balls of cotton candy, and their flavor has earned them the moniker “ice cream bean”. Since to us, the only thing better than fruit is ice cream, we’re big fans. 

Cupuacu
It might look like a potato, but this Amazonian fruit has a chocolatey pineapple flavor that deserves a place in the dessert course. The plant is related to the cacao plant that produces the most important ingredient in chocolate, so it’s no wonder there’s a family flavor resemblance!

Mangosteen
Love peaches and cream? Mangosteen has hints of this classic flavor combo all wrapped into one purple-skinned fruit. The individual white sections of fruit flesh resemble orange slices, and taste sweet, tropical and satisfying. Grab a mangosteen or three and you’ve got yourself one delicious dessert.

We’re happy to offer many of these rich and delicious, desserty fruits as they come into season throughout the year. At FruitStand, we love to bring unusual and hard to find produce directly to you from our small, specialty farm partners. Follow us on Instagram and check our website, fruitstand.com, for what’s picking next!