Summer harvest: Recipes with passionfruit

If, like me, you have a couple of passionfruit vines, you might be experiencing a glut of the tangy fruit at the moment. I know this is hardly a problem likely to elicit much sympathy but when you’ve tended your crop all season, you don’t want to see any go to waste. Rather than have each family member forced to eat 10 in a sitting, as suggested by my partner on the weekend, I dug out a couple of old family recipes that passionfruit are the perfect accompaniment for: sponge cake and pavlova.

Thanks to Gran and Mum! 

Gran’s sponge cake

This sponge cake is light as air, not at all like those overly sweet bought versions that resemble foam mattress filling. 

Ingredients

• 3 eggs
• 1 small cup sugar (Gran said a small cup so I use an old-fashioned teacup)
• 3/4 cup cornflour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 tablespoons plain flour
• icing sugar, to dust
• fresh cream, for filling
• 5-6 passionfruit (jam and fresh berries work equally well).

Method

Step 1 Grease a 20cm cake tin (you can split the mixture between two sandwich tins or save dishes and use one tin and cut the cake in half). Preheat oven to 180°C.

Step 2 Separate egg whites from yolks and beat whites until stiff (soft peaks). Add sugar and beat again. Beat in egg yolks. 

Step 3 Carefully fold in the sifted dry ingredients. Pour mixture into prepared tin and bake for around 20 minutes, or until the cake starts to shrink away from the edges of the tin. 

Step 4 Remove cake from oven and leave to cool in the pan for a few minutes. Run a knife between the cake and the tin, then turn the sponge out onto a wire rack.

Step 5 When completely cool, slice cake in half to create two sponges (if you used just one tin). Plop a large dollop of whipped cream and passionfruit in the centre of the bottom sponge and sandwich with the other half. Dust with sifted icing sugar.

Mum’s pavlova

Ingredients

• 3 egg whites
• 1 small cup caster sugar (Gran’s metrics have been handed down the generations)
• 1 tablespoon cornflour
• 1 dessertspoon vinegar (preferably malt)
• fresh cream
• passionfruit (or kiwifruit or berries)

Method

Step 1 Line a baking tray with baking paper. Preheat oven to 180°C. 

Step 2 Beat egg whites until stiff (you should be able to hold the bowl upside-down over your head and have none fall out). Slowly beat in sugar, a little at a time. Gently fold though cornflour and vinegar. Tip mixture onto tray and carefully smooth into a small even circle without flattening it too much. 

Step 3 Pop the pavlova in the oven for about five minutes, before dropping the temperature to 130°C. Cook for 1 hour then turn oven off, leaving the pavlova in the oven until it cools. 

Step 4 Cover pavlova in fresh whipped cream and spoon on lots of passionfruit pulp (sliced kiwifruit or strawberries are also delicious when the passionfruit run out).