Nina's Passionfruit Brownies

A short posting on these birthday brownies I made for my pal Nina, who - like me - has a penchant for passionfruit. These brownies are dark, fudgey and guaranteed to lift the spirits on cold February days. Though thankfully we've entered March so I won't complain about how awful February was (I mean seriously, it was cold!)

The recipe was adapted from Nigel Slater's "very good brownies" in his Nigel Slater's Diary book, I simply halved the recipe and threw in a few passionfruit. You could of course add walnuts or other fruit such as raspberries, pears...

Makes 12 brownies

Ingredients:

• 125g dark chocolate (70% if possible)
• 125g butter
• 150g light brown sugar
• 40g cocoa powder
• 40g self-raising flour
• 2 medium eggs + 1 extra yolk
• pinch salt
• seeds and pulp of two passionfruit

Method:

The beauty of brownies is in the ease of preparation. There's no method per se, just chuck everything together and bake for 1/2 hour til they're done.

Preheat oven to 180C. Place some greaseproof paper in a 18cm square baking tin. 

Over a saucepan of simmering water, place a heatproof bowl and in this bowl put the butter and chocolate. Allow to melt, then take off the heat and add the sugar, stirring til incorporated, and add the eggs. Sift the flour, salt and cocoa powder into this mixture and stir again,  finally adding the passionfruit pulp. 

Bake on middle shelf of the oven for 1/2 hour - the brownies are done when you insert a skewer and there's some dense crumbs left on the skewer but no gloopy, wet mixture.

Allow to cool 1 hour before cutting into pieces, or eat the brownies whilst warm :-)

* if you want to make brownies and freeze them for future use, double the quantity here and freeze what you don't eat immediately - great for when you need an emergency dessert at a dinner party or just when you need something uplifting on a rainy afternoon

Roses are red...

Actually, in this case they're yellow and orange. Much better.

In a fit of anti-Valentine-romance-is over-rated-not-to-mention-over-commercialised-pique I toyed with the idea of ignoring Feb 14th altogether and staying in to watch old Marilyn Monroe movies. Having decreed to my other half that we are not going out for dinner, nor anything remotely schmaltzy, we decided to spend a day together doing the following:

• roller-skiing in Hyde Park
• buying a wheelie bin at Homebase (it's on sale, or so I'm told by Casanova, otherwise known as the boyf)
• raiding the pastries at Ottolenghi (as retribution for said wheelie bin purchase)
• going to an exhibition at the V&A 
• cooking spaghetti alle vongole

Aside from no.2 the rest of our activities are perfect. No schmaltz in sight.

Seriously though, why do we make such a fuss about Valentine's Day? Having grumbled at length about it to anyone within earshot (and pity them listening) I relented and baked a few Valentine's-themed muffins today: almond and vanilla flavoured with chunks of white chocolate, then soused in a tart passionfruit and lime syrup, topped off with a generous sprinkling of tropical coconut (see my earlier post about coconut. I love coconut, I put it in my porridge, and even added some to a prawn and coriander noodle dish I made the other night)

I also have a penchant for passionfruit, but that's another story.

Anyway, here's the recipe. Happy Valentine's!

Ingredients

• 100g butter, softened
• 100g light brown sugar
• 110g self-raising flour
• 40g ground almonds
• 75g white chocolate, chopped into chunks
• 2 medium eggs
• 2 tbsp plain yogurt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• pinch salt

* if you want to make these plain without the passionfruit & lime syrup, try adding other flavours to the muffins, such as cardamom, cinnamon, orange zest, coffee, cocoa...all go well with white chocolate

Method:

Preheat oven to 190C, line a 12x muffin-hole tray with paper cases.

In a medium bowl sift the almonds, flour, salt and bicarb and stir through to distribute the raising agents. In a medium bowl, cream the butter and sugar til light and fluffy. Add one egg at a time to the butter mixture, beating each time to incorporate the egg. Then add the vanilla and yogurt, followed by the dry ingredients. Fold through with a large spoon til the mixture is even and no major lumps remain. 

Scoop the mixture into each muffin case is 3/4 full (if you don't want them to rise above the case then just fill halfway) and place on an upper-middle shelf of the oven. Bake 15-20 minutes til they're golden brown and feel firm to the touch.

For the syrup:

Take the pulp of 1 passionfruit and stir through some lime zest, along with a bit of lime juice, then add a couple of sieved tablespoon-fuls of icing sugar and stir through. If you have the time and inclination, make a sugar syrup by heating equal parts sugar and water and then boiling until it's a syrup consistency, I just went for a sloppy syrup this time...

My Kingdom for a pair of choux (buns)!

Bit of a manic Sunday, had promised myself to complete a challenge set by the Daring Bakers, and August's task has been "chocolate eclairs" - a brilliant choice, who doesn't love good choux? As it's my first Daring Baker challenge as newbie member, I wasn't going to miss out, pastry being my nemesis but thankfully choux buns are pretty foolproof.

So even if you're a bit of a pastry-phobe like me, give this a go, it's much more straightforward than other traditional pastries and so satisfying...my flatmate and her other half happened to be in when I made these and we managed to scoff ALL that I made (which was admittedly a small batch). A confession though: I didn't have time to make the filling, so I cheated by picking up vanilla custard from my local supermarket and cheekily adulterating it with some passionfruit pulp....mmm! Naughty to cheat, but in the broad scheme of things, better to enjoy these babies rather than forego the challenge! 

Recipe: 

• 125g whole milk
• 125g water
• 115g unsalted butter
• 1/4 tsp sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 140g plain flour
• 5 large eggs

Bring the milk/water/butter up to the boil, making sure to melt the butter completely before boiling the water.

Sift the flour with sugar and salt and add this to the boiling liquid whilst turning the heat off, immediately stir the mixture like a mad woman (!) for ca. 20 sec until the mixture is thick, gloopy and comes off the sides.

Allow the mixture to cool slightly, then add the eggs in increments until the mixture reaches a smooth, dropping consistency. 

Preheat the oven to 200ºC. Get a baking tray out and line with silicone paper. As my piping bags are MIA, I simply spooned dollops of mixture on the sheet and smoothed them with a wet finger so there were no spiky bits. So you have choux buns, not eclairs :-)

Bake on the top shelf of the oven for 25-30 minutes. It's VERY important NOT to open the oven door for at least 20 minutes as this will lead to deflation of the choux (or at least it has done in my experience)...when they look puffed up and golden, take the baking sheet out of the oven, pierce the underneath of each choux bun with a skewer and place them upside down back on the baking sheet and back into the oven to dry out for 5-10 minutes.

When the choux are dried out, allow them to cool whilst preparing the filling and chocolate glaze. In my case, as I was rushed for time, I made the following glaze:

• 100g plain chocolate
• 25g butter
• 1 tsp golden syrup
• 1-2 tsp water

Place all of this in a heatproof bowl over a pan with simmering water and allow to met until a smooth glaze is formed. This will require tasting, so dip your fingers in, but no double-dipping :-)

For the filling, I simply added the pulp of 1 1/2 passionfruit to the vanilla custard and improvised with a plastic food bag to create a rather slapdash piping bag to squirt the filling into the choux buns. A bit messy but that's part of the fun of making this...

It don't mean a thing if you ain't got that zing!

Perhaps Scandilicious should be re-named the 'Passionfruit' blog, as this dark, wrinkly fruit has been at the forefront of all my recent thoughts on baking. Which means all my thoughts generally. Not terribly exciting ones admittedly, but thoughts which nonetheless result in playing around with my favourite fruit on a bank holiday Monday evening. Does this mean I need to get out more? Probably. I'd like to think it's yet another successful experiment baking with passionfruit - this time with the addition of orange, and my Mother is visiting tomorrow so I've taken care of afternoon tea - bonus! Not to mention midnight scoffing later this evening ;-) By the by, these muffins are dedicated to my most fabulous former flatmate Nina - currently rusticated to Beijing - ni hao Nina, aka fellow passionfruit fan...

Passionfruit Muffins with Orange and Oats (or what's left over in your cupboard/fridge with a bit of zing)

• 250g plain flour
• 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 100g porridge oats (gives a good texture)
• 150g caster sugar
• 100g melted butter
• 180ml Quark (this was in my fridge, but use milk/yoghurt if you don't have any)
• 2 eggs
• 2 passionfruit
• 2 oranges - zest & juice
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 180ºC. Lightly oil 6 jumbo muffin tins, or 12 regular ones

In a large bowl, sift all the dry ingredients and stir through to distribute the raising agents. Add the orange zest then add all the liquid ingredients, stirring through with a large metal spoon, careful not to overfold or the muffins will be tough. Scoop mixture into muffin tray

Bake on centre shelf of the oven for 25 mins (regular size) 35-40 mins for the larger ones. These muffins come out light and fluffy, and predictably taste rather good with a cup of good olde English tea - see, I'm becoming more Anglo-Saxon by the day....

Something to please chocoholics and passionfruit-obsessives alike!

Following Wednesday's feature on passionfruit and its many virtues, here's an addendum: throw the pulp & seeds from a passionfruit in with your brownie mix. Or anything with chocolate for that matter, provided the chocolate is dark as the tartness of passionfruit exposes the sweetness of milk chocolate, whereas it marries happily with the bitterness of dark chocolate. Have a super-duper weekend!

The recipe from today:

• 200g butter
• 5 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
• 150g 72% chocolate - I used Green & Black's cooking chocolate
• 320g caster sugar
• 125g self-raising flour
• 30g ground almonds
• 4 eggs
• 1 passionfruit
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 180ºC, line a 20x30cm cake tin with baking parchment

In a medium saucepan, bring 3cm of water to a simmer, and place a large heatproof mixing bowl (pyrex is good) on top of the saucepan. Turn off the heat, then add butter, chocolate and cocoa powder to the mixing bowl. Allow this to melt, stirring occasionally, while you weigh the other ingredients. In a small bowl, break up the eggs with a fork and set aside. When the chocolate and butter has melted and looks smooth, take the large mixing bowl off the saucepan and allow to cool for a minute or two before adding the ground almonds, sugar, vanilla, eggs and finally the flour. Fold everything through and pour into the prepared cake tin. 

Bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 30-35 minutes. Keep an eye on the brownies - insert a skewer to see if the mix is cooked. If some wet batter still comes out, put the brownies back in the oven for another 5-8 minutes. Don't overbake them otherwise the brownies will be dry and cake-like :-) 

In praise of passionfruit...

Admittedly not a classic Scandinavian ingredient but passionfruit always reminds me of this heavenly tropical soda my Dad brought back from Sweden when I was younger. Amazing stuff, the Swedes do know something about making soda, although it's probably contraband (Norwegians don't like a lot of imports from abroad, even if it's their next-door neighbour). If I tasted this tropical lusciousness now I might be less enamoured by its walloping sacharineness, not to mention the plethora of 'E' numbers and preservatives. At any rate, the smell and taste of 

passionfruit pulp is an absolute joy and I don't bake nearly enough with this curious, wrinkly fruit. So, on the eve of my flatmate Sophie's birthday out came the baking bibles and I scoured through to find something worthy of her impending celebrations, et voila! a lovely citrussy sponge adapted from the Leiths Baking Bible with a passionfruit cream cheese icing. I added some ground almonds to the sponge for a bit of texture and moistness, and also chucked in frozen blueberries to the mix which went well with the lime zest, but was somewhat over

whelmed by the exquisite passionfruit icing. Whatever, it was still sheer passionfruit bliss, eat it and weep.

Cake Ingredients

• 150g softened butter
• 150g caster sugar
• grated zest of 1 lime
• 3 medium eggs
• 130g self-raising flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 70g ground almonds
• pinch salt
• 150g frozen blueberries (optional) or raspberries 

Icing Ingredients

• 150g Philadelphia Cream Cheese - no cheating, it has to be the full-fat variety
• 100g softened butter
• 60g icing sugar (this can be varied by 15g, depending on the tartness of the passionfruit)
• 2 passionfruit - 1 for the icing, 1 for decorating
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 190ºC. Lightly oil a round 20cm cake tin and set aside.

In a medium bowl, cream the softened butter with an electric mixer, then add the sugar, beat again until pale and fluffy before adding the lime zest. Add the eggs individually, beating with the mixer after each addition, and then finally add the ground almonds, and flour, folding through 6-8 times with a large metal spoon. Add your blueberries or raspberries at this stage and give the mix a few more folds with the spoon before turning out into the cake tin.

Bake on the central shelf in the oven for 45 minutes. This is quite a moist cake so it will take a little longer to bake through, if it starts to scorch, turn the heat down to 170ºC.

When the cake is baked, allow to cool completely before preparing the icing: using an electric whisk, soften the Philadelphia for a minute, then add the soft butter and mix thoroughly. Add your vanilla extract and icing sugar, and finally take the pulp of 1 passionfruit, including the spawn-like seeds, and fold this in to the icing with as spoon. Using a spatula, smooth the icing over the now-cooled cake and then using a teaspoon place dollops of passionfruit pulp & seeds all over the icing to create a polka dot effect! As it's rather warm and sultry in London I would advise keeping the cake in your fridge to prevent the icing from going rancid, it keeps rather well for a day or two...