A few days ago, I was given a bag of passionfruit, freshly picked from a friend’s backyard. Edible gifts like these are my favourite thing to receive. I often ‘pay it forward’ by baking with these gifts which are then given away to other people.

These passionfruit were especially good – large, heavy fruit with shiny skins and a really sweet, sharp aroma that lifted into the air when you cut into one. I’m not a fan of eating passionfruit ‘neat’ – something about it’s acidity does not agree with me unfortunately. Combined with dairy products or baked in cakes and cookies however, it becomes a pleasant, perfumed flavour that I would happily enjoy any day.

I love pairing passionfruit with white chocolate ganache, vanilla ice-cream, pineapple bavarois, coconut pannacotta or even served simply as a passionfruit curd tart (caramelise each individual slice with some icing sugar and a blowtorch, for that extra special touch). Passionfruit also goes well with floral flavours like violet and lavender, citrus fruits such as yuzu, mandarin, lemon and lime, and spices like star anise and tonka bean. Serve with nasturtium petals or borage, if you can source any.

With the passionfruit I was given, I decided to make a custard. Something about the silky, soothing nature of custards really appeals to me at the moment. If my life were an ad, there would be bluebirds chirping in the background and butterflies fluttering at the edges of my vision as I savour each spoonful.

Granted, this custard is more of a set cream, but it has the texture and lazy flow of a custard, and eats like one, so I’m sticking with the name. This custard is insanely good with ginger boterkoek, or for something a little more fancy, it can also be dressed up with tapioca pearls, sake bubbles and twice-baked lavender shortbread.

Passionfruit Custard :

415g pouring cream (35% fat)
50g European-style yogurt
185g skim milk
120g passionfruit juice (strained pulp from approximately 6 large passionfruit)
70g caster sugar
2 1/2 leaves gold-strength gelatine, soaked in iced water until soft and pliable

Warm the cream, yogurt, milk, passionfruit juice and sugar in a pan, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Squeeze the water out of the gelatine, and add it to the cream mixture. Whisk this gently until dissolved, then strain the mixture into a bowl. Allow to cool before pouring it into your desired containers. Allow the custards to chill overnight in the refrigerator before using.

Candied Ginger Boterkoek :
(Boterkoek is a Dutch buttery shortcake. You can alter the flavourings to suit your preferences. This recipe is from Warm Bread and Honey Cake by Gaitri Pagrach-Chandra)

150g caster sugar
250g plain flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
zest of 1/4 lemon
200g butter, softened
1 egg yolk
a little beaten egg, for glazing
100g stem (preserved) ginger, drained and chopped
75g fine dessicated coconut

Optional:
55g blanched whole almonds
55g skinned hazelnuts

Mix the caster sugar, flour, salt and lemon zest together in a large bowl. Add the softened butter and egg yolk and knead until everything is well mixed in. Knead in the ginger and coconut. Shape the dough into a ball and put it in a sealed plastic bag in the refrigerator overnight.

Next day, remove the dough from the refrigerator and leave to come to room temperature.

Preheat the oven to 180’C. Grease a 24 cm/9 inch round tin and dust with flour.

Knead the dough very briefly, then shape it into a large disc and put it in the tin. Use your hand to flatten it as evenly as possible to fit the tin. Brush with beaten egg. If you are using almonds or hazelnuts, press them into the surface. Otherwise, score a plaid pattern onto the surface with a fork.

Bake in the oven for 20 – 25 minutes. Boterkoek should never be hard of crisp, so this should be baked only until just done. It will be soft when it comes out of the oven. Leave to cool until lukewarm in the tin, then carefully turn it out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Store in an airtight container in a cool place so that the butter doesn’t go rancid. It will keep for at least 1 week but is at its best after 24 hours.

Twice-baked lavender shortbread :
(based on a recipe from Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich)

170g unsalted butter, melted and still warm
5 tablespoons caster sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
190g plain flour
1 1/4 teaspoons dried lavender buds

Line a 7 x 10 inch pan with baking paper.

In a bowl, combine the melted butter, sugar, vanilla, lavender and salt. Add the flour and mix until just incorporated. Spread the dough evenly in the pan. Let it rest overnight on the kitchen counter (don’t refrigerate).

Preheat the oven to 150’C. Bake the shortbread for 45 mins, then remove the pan from the oven. While the shortbread is still warm, use a pizza cutter or sharp knife to cut the shortbread into the desired shapes. Allow to cool for 10 minutes, then lift the cut pieces onto a baking lined tray, positioning them slightly apart so that they bake evenly. Return the shortbread pieces to the oven for an additional 15 minutes, then remove from the oven and allow to cool completely on a rack.

The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession.

Tiramisu is something I rather enjoy eating and have made many times before. Friends tell me of a local restaurant where if you order tiramisu, it is brought to your table in a large glass bowl and scooped right in front of you. Surely the perfect way to enjoy tiramisu!

For the challenge this month, I thought I would try to present tiramisu in a different way whilst still retaining it’s rustic charm. Instead of assembling the components, I used them individually on the plate. My first attempt at this was not too successful. I think I was trying too hard to use all the necessary components on the plate, and sometimes you really can’t force something that just doesn’t fit.

At this point, I was humming a little ditty by Cher because I had run out of a few components and wasn’t sure if I’d have time to make them again. Luckily I managed to find a spare moment and decided to risk a second attempt – this time also boosting the chocolate content two or three-fold. What you see above is the end result.

The sponge is from here. It is light, very flavoursome, and lots of fun to make (what a great dinner party piece it would be, to get your guests to ‘make’ their own chocolate cake). Also on the plate : an espresso granita, Marsala-spiked chocolate pastry cream, a lucscious chocolate mousse and a coffee flavoured mascarpone. The mascarpone incidentally, was my favourite component. It’s not something I would usually bother making at home, though I’ve made it often at work (usually with double cream and citric acid, instead of single cream and lemon juice). Items that didn’t make it to the plate : the savoiardi sponge and zabaglione (but I promise you that I did make both the first time round).

You can get the recipes for the components from the hosts’ blogs. I’m providing the recipe for the chocolate mousse below.

Thank you Aparna and Deeba for the challenge! I loved the end result so much, I might be tweaking it a little and putting it on my menu soon 🙂

Chocolate Mousse :
(serves 10; based on a recipe from Wild Weed Pie by Janni Kyritsis)

300g semi-sweet (57%-cocoa) couverture chocolate, melted and kept lukewarm
2 eggs
5 egg yolks
3/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup water
1 1/2 cups 35%-fat cream, whipped to soft peaks

Whisk eggs and yolks in the bowl of an electric mixer until pale. Meanwhile, combine the 3/4 cup sugar and water in a small saucepan, heat gently until all the sugar dissolves, then boil it until it reaches a temperature of 118’C. Slowly add this sugar syrup to the whisking egg mixture, drizzling it down the side of the bowl, then continue whisking until the egg mixture is cool. Fold in melted chocolate, then the cream. Chill for at least a few hours or overnight, to set.

I should first confess that I baked my cannoli. I’ve made plenty of cannoli before, but never at home due to my no-deep-frying-at-home policy (partly because I dread having to do the requisite post-fry clean up).

So, baked cannoli. Despite this, they actually turned out pretty well. The shells may have lacked that wonderful bit of blistering you get from frying, but they were slightly puffy and acceptably crunchy. A step up from the vast difference between oven chips and fried chips, if you will.

The resulting cannoli formed part of a dessert that played on the flavours of avocado, vegemite and toast; three ingredients which are one of my favourite ways to start the morning. How I came about the idea of incorporating them into a dessert, is a bit long winded and would probably require a flowchart to accurately re-tell. So I’m not going to.

Instead, I thought I would distract you with a recollection of my first avocado experience. Growing up, avocados were considered pretty exotic, so it was only when I was at least 10 that I tried my first avocado. It being the 80’s (that was the excuse anyway), mom served it to us sliced, with scoops of store-bought vanilla ice-cream. It was so horrible, I think I tried to hide the slices underneath the pool of melted ice-cream, and it was many years later before I finally realised how delicious avocados were.

Meanwhile, back at the cannoli factory…

I filled the cannoli shells with a vegemite chocolate ganache and paired them with a scoop of avocado ice-cream and some twisty chocolate tuiles for extra crunch. The avocado ice-cream recipe comes from The Perfect Scoop, by David Leibovitz. Following David’s recommendation to pour espresso over the ice-cream, I decided to incorporate coffee into the dessert, in the form of a crumble.

As with most first attempts, this is a tasty dish that would require a few changes if I were to make it again. And you know what, I just might make it again!

The November 2009 Daring Bakers Challenge was chosen and hosted by Lisa Michele of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. She chose the Italian Pastry, Cannolo (Cannoli is plural), using the cookbooks Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and The Sopranos Family Cookbook by Allen Rucker; recipes by Michelle Scicolone, as ingredient/direction guides. She added her own modifications/changes, so the recipe is not 100% verbatim from either book.

Thanks Lisa Michele, for picking such a versatile and interesting challenge this month!