Making your own passion fruit curd is a delicious proposition. Take the best in-season fruit and combine with luscious egg yolks and butter for a creamy dreamy dessert!
I love a good fruit curd. Lemon and citrus curds are the most popular, pairing tart with sweet and buttery. And those flavor combos are exactly why passion fruit makes a great addition to your fruit curds!
If you aren’t familiar, fruit curd is an amazing spread that can be enjoyed on toast or biscuits or to fill tarts and cookies. With less sugar than jams, it’s a perfect part of brunch or dessert.
If you love sweet and sour foods, this is right up your alley. Passion fruit can be slightly sour, so adding fat and sugar mellows it out so you can enjoy a taste of the tropics any time you want! This is a very simple recipe that can help you learn some new techniques in the kitchen.
Do you know what tempering, a double boiler, and nappé consistency are? Let’s find out!
Ingredients for Passion Fruit Butter
Everything here is a pantry staple except the passion fruit. Pick those up fresh! And once you master this recipe, you’ll be comfortable swapping out the fruit to make your own combinations.
- Passion Fruit Pulp: We are using the full pulp from inside each antioxidant-rich passion fruit, seeds and all. This will give us the best flavor and the seeds are a fun textural element.
- Egg Yolks: Egg yolks are necessary here to thicken the fruit curd. Save the whites for Egg White Oatmeal.
- Sugar: Don’t reduce the sugar in this recipe as it is needed to keep the integrity of the curd as well as balance the tartness of the fruit.
- Butter: Butter adds the perfect silkiness here.
Passion Fruit Buying tip
Pick up at least 4 passion fruits on your shopping trip. Each one should yield about 2 tablespoons of pulp. Make sure and pick ones that feel heavy for their size. Sometimes you can find pulp in the freezer section, which can be used here in a pinch.
How to make Passion Fruit Curd
There are a few processes here you might not be familiar with, but I’ll walk you through it step-by-step, and pretty soon you’ll be quite confident!
Step 1: Whisk Eggs
Whisk the yolks and lemon juice until smooth. Do this in a bowl slightly larger than you think you need so we can use it for tempering later.
Step 2: Warm Passion Fruit
Bring a pot of water on the stove to a simmer. Get yourself a separate glass bowl that fits nicely onto the pot, ensuring the water doesn’t touch the bottom of the bowl. This is our makeshift double boiler and is a way to gently heat the contents of the bowl using steam. Add the add passion fruit pulp, sugar, and butter. Stir and let warm until the butter has melted.
Step 3: Temper
Now the fun part – tempering! If you just added the egg yolks to the hot bowl, you’d quickly have scrambled eggs. No one wants that in their fruit curd! Tempering is the process of adding a little bit of the warm passion fruit liquid to the bowl of egg yolks while stirring constantly. Add a tablespoon at a time until the small bowl of eggs is warm to the touch.
Step 4: Combine
Now that the egg yolks are warm (close in temperature to the hot liquid in the bowl) you can slowly pour it back into the large bowl, whisking constantly! If you had it warm enough and you stir constantly, you shouldn’t have any curdled eggs.
Step 5: Cook
Now that everything is combined, return the bowl on top of the pot so you can stir and cook. What we are looking for is nappé consistency. You can see in the photo what I am talking about – when you run your finger through a coated spoon it will leave a trail that doesn’t fill back in. This means you’re done!
Step 6: Chill
Next up, chill out! Carefully pour the curd into a jar and place plastic wrap directly on the surface. This is just like when making pudding to prevent a skin from forming. Let the passion fruit butter chill for at least 4 hours to allow it to thicken.
Step 7: Serve
Spread your deliciously tropical passion curd over toast, biscuits, or use in desserts! Store in the fridge for up to a week.
Recipe tips
Keep it Fresh: After the initial chill, you can use a regular lid on your jar. Keep it airtight and your passion fruit curd will stay fresh all week.
Juicy: Try fresh lime juice instead of lemon for a fun little tweak.
Dirty Dishes: Yup, we’re using a lot of different equipment and utensils here, but each one serves a purpose! A whisk is essential for texture and a wooden spoon lets you check consistency. It’s all worth it in the end.
Dreamy Desserts
Passionfruit curd is so good, definitely try a spoon by itself as a quick treat at the end of the day. But if you’re looking for more, there are so many great ways to enjoy a taste of the tropics.
- Ricotta Blueberry Galette, this would be perfect topped with passion fruit curd instead of whipped cream.
- Greek Yogurt Biscuits, enhance the herbs with a tropic flair. Try butter and passion fruit curd on a still-warm biscuit.
- Healthy Banana Splits, fruit curd stirred into the cottage cheese or yogurt would be delicious, then add coconut!
- Eggless French Toast, would become a brunch favorite when dolloped with fruit curd!
Ingredients
- 4 large egg yolks
- 1 Tbsp lemon juice 15 mL
- ½ cup passion fruit pulp about 4 large passion fruit
- ½ cup sugar 100 g
- 6 Tbsp unsalted butter 84 g
Instructions
- Whisk Eggs: In a small bowl, whisk together egg yolks and lemon juice until smooth.
- Warm Passion Fruit: Bring a medium pot of water to a simmer. To a separate medium glass bowl, add passion fruit pulp, sugar, and butter. Place the bowl over the simmering water, ensuring the bottom of the bowl hovers over the water (but doesn't touch it). Whisk the mixture until butter has melted. Remove from heat, but keep pot of water going on the stove.
- Temper: Slowly add a spoonful of the warm passion fruit mixture to the egg yolks, whisking to combine. Continue slowly adding passion fruit to the egg yolk until it is warm to the touch (you should add a few tablespoons total).
- Combine: Very slowly stream the egg yolk mixture into the bowl of passion fruit, whisking constantly, until all of the egg mixture is incorporated with the passion fruit.
- Cook: Set the bowl with everything in it back over the pot of simmering water, again ensuring the bottom isn't touching the water. Use a rubber spatula or whisk to constantly stir and scrape the bottoms and sides of the bowl. Continue cooking and stirring until mixture has thickened to nappé consistency*.
- Chill: Transfer to a jar or container, then place plastic wrap directly onto the passion fruit curd. Chill for at least 4 hours to allow curd to thicken.
- Serve: Spread over toast, biscuits, or use in desserts! Store in the fridge for up to a week.
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