Springtime afternoon tea

 

Purple passionfruit

I love passionfruit, because it reminds me so much of Summer. With the warmer weather setting in, I've been buying bags of passionfruit from the farmers' market so that I would have it on hand, should baking inspiration strike. As my next door neighbour (the nice one) is in her recovery phase from a long battle with the flu, I decided the other day, on my day off work, to bake a passionfruit cake and take a slice over to her for afternoon tea, in hope that it would help to lift her spirits a bit.

 

I don't like using artificial colours, flavourings and essences, if I can avoid it, so for this cake, I use the actual juice from fresh passionfruit. I extracted the juice by pressing the pulp of about half a dozen-ish passionfruit through a sieve. The aroma and taste of passionfruit are quite strong, so using the natural fruit juice will sufficiently bring out its flavour in the baked cake. As you can see in the pictures below, the juice is also pigmented enough to stain the batter with a yellow-orange hue.

 

Mmm doesn't this remind you of a lemon meringue dessert? I am convinced that a passionfruit meringue pie would be equally as delicious. Perhaps I should try that next time?

The light, fluffy final batter, after mixing in the cloud of whisked egg whites.

On this occasion, I decided to bake the cake in heart-shaped springform pans. The shape is too pretty to be only taken out for use once a year, on St Valentine's Day.



Cooling the cake layers

I usually prefer my cakes layered and sandwiched with a filling, fully-frosted and prettied up; however, because I wanted this cake to be light and Springtime-y, and for the passionfruit flavour and colour of the cake to take centre-stage, I made it a more casual affair by simply topping a single cake layer with whipped chantilly cream, spooning over some fresh passionfruit pulp, to hint at what to expect, and finishing off with a sprinkle of toasted flaked almonds, to add that extra crunch factor. (If you've been following my foodie posts, I think by now you would know that the textural elements of a dish are very important to me.)

 

Ta-da! A rustic, homely afternoon tea cake. 

The colour of the juice baked into the cake (as you can see below) and the cake layers not only smelt of passionfruit, but you could also taste the citrus-y tang from it. Natural is best and it works!



 

Eating this cake took me back to the (too) brief two weeks I spent frolicking under the Hawai'ian sun two Springs ago. Just a bit of trivia for you, the passionfruit is called the liliko'i over there and was introduced into the Hawai'ian islands by a man named Mr. E. N. Reasoner, who brought the seeds over from Australia. The fruit is now available in abundance on the islands, and is a popular flavour for various desserts, ice-cream and sauces.

Oh, and I didn't end up bringing any cake over to my neighbour, because she headed out before the cake was done. Turns out that even people who are unwell have more of an active social life than I do!