PASSION FRUIT BUTTER

On a recent trip to Hawaii, I picked up a small and very expensive jar of passion fruit (lilikoi) butter.   It was both sweet, sour and absolutely delicious.  It was so good that my family put it on everything.  It became a preserve for breakfast, a topping for dessert and was sometimes just spooned out of the jar and eaten directly!  Passion fruit and citrus fruit butters or curds are easy to make... once you know how! This recipe is for passion fruit butter, but other fruit can be substituted. 

Acidic fruits like passion fruit (lilikoi), mango, pineapple and citrus fruit make better fruit butters as a result of their bold flavors.  

Passion fruit or lilikoi grow naturally in the tropics.  There are two main varieties, a purple and a yellow-fruited variety. A friend recently gave me some seeds of a hybrid passion fruit that I'm excited to grow.   In the meantime, fresh passion fruit is available at some grocery stores and is usually really expensive, considering they grow wild in the tropics.  For this passion fruit (lilikoi) butter, I decided to purchase an all-natural, sugar-free puree which saved me the hassle of blending and straining the fruit to a puree. Once I had my puree, the rest of the process was fairly simple and easy.  

This passion fruit butter recipe is easy to make and is a great substitution for your regular preserves.  The great thing is that you don't need to add butter onto your toast! Here are some tips for making this fruit butter fool-proof.

Tips for making passion fruit butter.

Equipment

There are some recipes that do not use a double boiler but cook the eggs directly in the saucepan.  The challenge is not to make your saucepan so hot that your eggs start to scramble.  It is better just to create a makeshift double boiler like I do than to accidentally cook your eggs! If you don't have a double boiler, rest a larger, non-plastic bowl on the saucepan of water.  Allow some of the water to touch the bowl.  Allow the water to simmer at medium-low heat and slowly thicken the egg yolks.   See video.   

Fruit juice or puree

Fresh is always best!  However, sometimes a certain type of fresh fruit is not in season.  Purees (if available) are better than the juice because they are thicker and more like the consistency of the butter.  It is also preferable to use unsweetened purees with no additives to control the sweetness of the butter.  

If you are making your own fresh passion fruit puree, blend the pulp of the passion fruits and then sieve the puree through a strainer to remove all the hard seeds. Because passion fruit has such a concentrated flavor, you can use less fresh pulp, depending on your taste.

When using citrus fruit, use flavorful fruit.  It makes a big difference in the flavor and aroma of the butter!  I recently made a Bearss lime butter and you can taste and smell the floral scent in the butter.

Sugar

The amount of granulated sugar added to the butter is entirely a taste preference.  I like a tart flavor so I tend not to add too much sugar.  This recipe is pretty forgiving. Start with the minimum amount of sugar and if that's too tart, additional sugar can be added. 

Egg yolks

This recipe calls for additional egg yolks in order to make the butter rich and creamy. These yolks should be heated, preferably over a double boiler to kill any bacteria.  Save your egg whites for a pavlova recipe and drizzle some butter onto the pavlova!