Our passionfruit vine has been very prolific this year. I've been gathering passionfruit for nearly a fortnight now, piling them up in the fruit bowl while I ponder what to do with them. Earlier in the season, the March edition of Gourmet Traveller arrived on the same day I gathered the first crop, conveniently featuring a special on passionfruit. Although we enjoyed the passionfruit yo-yos I made, I didn't feel like them this time, nor passionfruit mousse, or the flummery recipe I found in my grandmother's cookbook. So the passionfruit sat and grew wrinkly, and Adam kept asking what I was going to do with them, and still I couldn't decide.
Finally, inspiration struck and I decided to make passionfruit cupcakes. Cupcakes seem to be featured everywhere at the moment, so obviously the idea of cute little cakes had lodged in my brain. I made a basic butter cake recipe, substituting passionfruit juice for milk, divided it into paper muffin cases and iced the cakes with a sunny yellow passionfruit-flavoured icing.
The cupcakes are a bright, cheery yellow and taste like sunshine - a perfect treat as the days grow shorter and darker. Because my vine produces quite small fruit, I've specified a juice measurement, rather than the number of fruit, as it depends on the size you grow or buy. Feel free to adjust the measurements to suit your taste.
PASSIONFRUIT CUPCAKES
125g butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
60ml passionfruit juice, strained
Cut the passionfruit in half, scoop out the pulp and put into a strainer set over a bowl. Use the back of a teaspoon to push the pulp through the strainer, extracting the juice. Discard the pulp and seeds.
Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then add the sifted flour and the passionfruit juice. Spoon into a 12-cup muffin tin, lined with paper cases (I found this quantity made only nine cupcakes but my muffin tin is quite large). Bake at 180 degrees for 15-20 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of a cake comes out clean.
Cool on a wire rack and ice when cold. For the icing, mix one cup of icing sugar with enough passionfruit juice to make a soft icing consistency (not too runny).
4 comments:
They sound lovely! I have got to get myself some passionfruit while all these mouthwatering recipes are floating around the blogosphere!
I wish we had a passionfruit vine! The cakes sound lovely.
Yummy! I have never thought of doing a passionfruit capcake but they sound perfect.
Hi Cindy, Lucy and Jenjen - thanks for your lovely comments. I must admit that I never thought much about passionfruit until we planted the vine but don't be put off if you don't grow your own - it's so worth picking up some from the fruit shop and making something at home. I find passionfruit such a happy fruit - it makes me think of summer.
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