Passion Fruit Curd Is The Must Try Alternative To The Traditional Lemon

Lemon curd, the custardy traditional British fruit preserve, is a great way to hold onto the bright, tangy flavors of summer all year long (via British Food History). Lemon curd can be used to make tarts and cakes, or as a topping for scones, bread, and desserts. While lemon might be the most typical fruit of choice, as Baking Sense points out, there are plenty of other fruit variations out there for enterprising cooks. One of the most exciting of these flavors is passion fruit.

According to Blue Book Produce, passion fruits thrive in tropical regions, and are mostly grown in Brazil. The tropical fruit is also packed with nutrition and is highly valued for its high dietary fiber and antioxidant content, per Healthline. According to The Mom 100, when ripe, passion fruits are round with purple, wrinkly skin. When you cut into the fruit, tiny black seeds coated in a bright orange pulp burst out. This pulp is the most flavorful part of the fruit and is the star ingredient in passion fruit curd.

The reason passion fruit makes an excellent curd, besides its delicious flavor, is that curds are at their best when there are some sour flavors present to balance the rich, sweet spread, per The Economic Times. The other primary ingredients in curd are egg yolks, butter, salt, cornstarch, and sugar (via MasterClass). Passion fruit has a rich sweetness of its own, but the addition of sugar and the fat from the butter and egg yolks results in a well-rounded curd. The acidity of the fruit will also help the eggs to set, and not curdle while the curd is cooked.

Baking Sense says that one thing to keep in mind when making a passion fruit curd is to be wary of the seeds. In order to separate the seeds from the pulp, the site recommends adding the pulp (seeds and all) to a blender or food processor and blitzing it. Then, pass the juice through a sieve to filter out the seeds. 

Once your passion fruit juice is ready to go, you will mix it with eggs and sugar, then cook the mixture over low heat until it coats the back of a spoon. Then, add in the butter and viola, you have passion fruit curd that can be used for a cake filling, or you can just eat it straight out of the bowl.