Passionfruit evokes such happy food and family memories for me. Growing up, my family had a passionfruit vine running all along the side fence of our back yard. Both my brother and I loved passionfruit from an early age, especially fresh off the vine - but there was a rule: we were only allowed to pick passionfruit up off the ground, not the tree. Each morning, we'd sneak out the back door in our pyjamas and collect up fallen passionfruit ... then shake the vine to see if any more just happened to fall off. Although we knew they weren't actually ripe enough to eat until the skin was rumpled, it didn't stop us from trying to hurry the process along.
Nowadays, I still love the tang of passionfruit. (Perhaps this explains my fondness for Marlborough sauvignon blanc?) Fresh is best and pulp is ok as long as it's been made naturally (ie, not artificially flavoured). I also loved to bake with passionfruit and the BEST flavouring comes in the form of Fresh As freeze dried powder. Along with its raspberry counterpart, I now keep a constant supply of passionfruit powder in the fridge. It's great in cakes, buttercream frosting and to flavour meringues. Also, being a family favourite flavour, I made white chocolate passionfruit mud cakes for both my brother's and my birthdays this year.Apart from availability, I find the biggest stumbling block on the road to passionfruit indulgence is the price. Have you seen what it costs to buy passionfruit these days?? I always thought $20/kg was an outrageous price to pay for fresh passionfruit until I saw the price on the Countdown app today: $45/kg! I'll definitely wait until they are in season in a few months' time before thinking about buying some.
Passionfruit is easily one of #myfavouritethings. When I grow up, I want to plant passionfruit vines of my own and eat their fruit all day long.
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