Passionfruit...yum!

Once again this year, my self-sown passionfruit vines produced quite a few fruit. A number of passionfruit were 'taken' by possums and maybe fruit bats perhaps? but some of the fruit lower down survived intact. I've made a few batches of passionfruit icing but I was determined to have a go at making passionfruit butter. There are lots and lots of recipes on the internet and eventually I chose one that didn't have a lot of sugar in it and not 6-8 egg yolks but used the whole egg.

The recipe I chose also was cooked on the stove, not in the microwave. At the last tupperware party I went to, the demonstrator made lemon butter in the microwave and there are recipes for microwave passionfruit butter as well. As I stood there stirring the mixture in the heatproof bowl, I wondered whether I should have opted for a microwave recipe...and then the 'magic' happened after about 10 minutes...the mixture thickened. I was surprised how much passionfruit butter the recipe yielded...the recipe said to have a jar steralised ready for the 1 cup of passionfruit butter...I actually got 500mls.
DH and I have had crepes (homemade of course) rolled up with a generous dollop of the butter inside, topped with another dollop of cream and dusted with icing sugar. Next we'll probably have some more of the butter in little pastry shells. A friend suggested that using passionfruit butter instead of jam in jamdrops is delicious.

Here's the recipe I used:- (taken from About.com Australian and New Zealand Food)

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup of passionfruit pulp
• 2 Tbsp of fresh lemon juice
• 1/4 cup of castor (berry) sugar
• 125 grams (1/2 cup) butter
• 4 extra large eggs, lightly beaten
• Special equipment: Sterilized Airtight jar for 1 cup of passionfruit butter

Preparation:

1. Place a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of water. Make sure the bottom of the bowl isn't touching the water. Bring water to the boil over a medium heat.
2. Turn heat down to medium-low. Add butter and sugar to bowl and stir with a wooden spoon to melt and combine.
3. Mix together passionfruit pulp, lemon juice and eggs in a small mixing bowl. Add to butter/sugar mixture and stir continuously with a wooden spoon until mixture thickens and coats the back of the spoon. This should take about 10-12 minutes over a medium-low heat.
4. Once thickened, remove bowl from heat and allow butter to cool completely before storing in sterilized airtight jar.
5. Refrigerate to store.

A friend mentioned that she made some passionfruit melting moments....I've asked her for the recipe as I have 4 fruit left! lol