mini passionfruit cakes

mini passionfruit cakes

15 Aug 2012

During the London Olympics, due to the time difference between Sydney and London, most of the interesting events occurred in the middle of the night. There's been precious little entertainment on t.v the past 2 weeks so instead of watching television, I listened to the olympics coverage on the radio and read a book.

One show that has been on the t.v, is MasterChef All Stars. I've only caught a few episodes but I did manage to see last week's Country Women's Association cake challenge. As I love all things passionfruit I decided to track down the CWA Passionfruit Cake recipe which featured on the show. I'd bought a bag of passionfruit the previous weekend and had been looking for a way to use them.



The gas supply to my building is still being fixed. When I had no gas Saturday morning, I wasn't sure I'd have anything to put up on the blog, especially when the plumber was otherwise engaged for the day. By 4.00 p.m. the gas was back on, so I pre-measured all the cake ingredients Saturday night as I knew I'd have to be up early to get these in the oven and baked before my 9.15 Sunday morning cycle class. Gosh that was a long sentence, wasn't it?




As is my way, I changed the recipe a little. Instead of making a single cake I made 9 mini cakes from the recipe which took about 20 minutes to bake. I also used strained passionfruit juice instead of passionfruit pulp. Sometimes crunching through passionfruit seeds you're not expecting to find, isn't such a pleasant experience.




I iced the cakes once I returned home from the gym. The CWA recipe didn't come with instructions for passionfruit icing so I used this one from the Cook's Companion by Stephanie Alexander.

Passionfruit Cake 
250g butter, softened 
1 cup (220g) caster sugar 
3 eggs separated 
2 cups (300g) SR Flour 
¾ cup (180ml) buttermilk 
¼ cup (60ml) passion fruit pulp 

Pre-heat oven to 350°F/180°C. Grease and lightly flour a 20cm/8 in round tin, tap out any excess flour. Beat butter and sugar in a small bowl with electric mixer until light and fluffy, beat in egg yolks, one at a time, beat until well combined. 

Transfer mixture to large bowl, stir in half the sifted flour and half the buttermilk, then stir in the remaining flour and buttermilk and passionfruit pulp.

Beat egg whites in clean small bowl with electric mixer until soft peaks form. Fold into cake mixture in two batches. Spread mixture into prepared tin. Bake in moderate oven, for about 50 minutes or until cooked. 

Stand for 5 minutes before turning onto covered rack to cool. Ice only on top with passionfruit icing.

Passionfruit Icing
1 cup pure icing sugar, sifted
50 grams unsalted butter, melted
the pulp of 2 passionfruit.

In a small bowl combine the icing sugar, the melted butter and the passionfruit pulp. For a runny icing, place the bowl over a pan of simmering water and stir the mixture for 1-2 minutes or until shiny.



As you can see the mini passionfruit cakes are perfect served with a nice cup of tea. I snaffled one for myself and took the rest into work. They were an absolute hit and devoured by every-one, even by my colleague Michael who declared he doesn't like passionfruit.

Just 2 more busy work days to get through before the weekend. Yippee!

I'll see you all again next week,

Jillian

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masterchef and potato gnocchi with exotic mushrooms

masterchef and potato gnocchi with exotic mushrooms

13 Jun 2012

I have a very small kitchen so I try to keep my kitchen utensils down to the bare essentials. When I was home at Christmas, my parents had invested in a potato ricer, still unused. I’ve always used a potato masher to deal with my spuds, but as one of my friends swears by a potato ricer, I thought I’d give it a go. The ricer was easy to use, easy to clean and made lovely mashed potatoes so I was sold. It took me a while but I finally bought a potato ricer a few weeks ago, now known as the 'contraption'. My kitchen is no larger than before so the contraption now lives carefully wrapped in a plastic bag in my broom cupboard, which brings me indirectly to MasterChef.



A few weeks ago I was watching one of the Friday night master classes where Gary made potato gnocchi with exotic mushrooms I looked at the potato ricer languishing in my broom cupboard and decided to try out the recipe. I bought a packet of exotic mushrooms at my local fruit market and had everything else I needed in the pantry or the fridge.



I made a batch of potato gnocchi and not much else was needed apart from the mushrooms, some garlic, a few herbs, some grated lemon rind and of course I had to add a little bit of my favourite pecorino pepato cheese at the end.



Overall, though not quite a pronto dish, it was still pretty easy to make, specially now I have a contraption of my own.

I'll see you all again next week, 

Jillian

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Chantilly Meringues with Passionfruit Curd

Chantilly Meringues with Passionfruit Curd

15 Jul 2009

Australia is in the grip of the final week of Masterchef. A few weeks ago during the masterclass, Gary demonstrated a way of making lemon curd in the microwave. I was dying to try it out so a few weeks ago I left the fruit market loaded with citrus fruit and passionfruit and I set about making curd, 4 ways.



I bought some sweet preserving jars and made small batches of lime curd, lemon curd, mandarin curd and passionfruit curd. I think I ate half the curd during the cooking process 'cos it was just so delicious. At this stage I really don't have a stand out favourite as each curd has it's own personality. Now that I have all this curd stored in the fridge, expect a few curd inspired cakes and desserts on the blog.



With all those leftover egg whites, what else could I do but make some meringues? I sandwiched the meringues with a layer of passionfruit curd and cream. The verdict - delicious!

Jillian

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