Passion fruit & coconut mini-cheesecakes

Passion fruits have always been one of the most exciting fruits in my life... I love their slightly wrinkly looks, the beautiful smooth lining of the inside of their skins (plus the intriguing knobbly bits), their gorgeous sweet, but at the same time refreshing, smell, the beautiful deep yellow colour of the juice and the glistening dark seeds. Their smell is intoxicating and so is their taste. Passion fruit is not something I had a lot when I grew up, in fact, I don't even remember having my first passion fruit - (and you thought that was where this story was heading, didn't you! In fact, I am not sure this story is heading anywhere at the moment, so let's move on...)

I found these mini cheesecakes in a finger food cookbook I bought ages ago - I had quite a few parties coming up and needed refreshing ideas for nibbles. Finding this at Europe's biggest bookshop on Piccadilly five minutes before closing time, I fought a fierce battle with myself. I have so many cookbooks and magazines already and have bought quite a few that I never, ever use... so the one voice inside my head was saying "don't buy it, you need a new cookbook just as much as you need a malignant growth! Come back some other time, browse the book and only buy it if you can find at least ten recipes that you're dying to make." (Half a year down the line I have been through the book and have found just nine pages I thought were worth to be earmarked... or did I run out of post-its? There are a lot of great ideas in there, but if this isn't your first canape book and especially if you already have the one and only Treuille under your belt, don't buy it, especially not if you expect a picture and detailed descriptions & handy tips with every recipe).

But the other voice was shouting louder, jumping up and down in agitation, saying that finger food was my great passion, after all, and even if I only found one or two neat recipes in it or if one of the pages just lent itself as inspiration for something else, I shouldn't feel bad for buying it. What to do? The security guards and staff at the till were impatiently looking at their watches already (who can blame them at 11 pm on a Saturday), so I was under time pressure. The latter won, but as I was paying I was thinking that I could probably have bought the book on amazon for a lot less... still, I took it home and put it on the shelf where it, sure enough, gathered dust until a few weeks ago.

The one recipe that had got my attention from the very first moment of browsing was the so-called "passionfruit and coconut slice". Although the photo isn't brilliant, I very much liked the presentation with the slivered fresh coconut on top. Unfortunately, the day I decided to make these cheesecakes, my husband downright refused to open the fresh coconut I brought home, mumbling something about not having the right equipment and not wanting to spend the afternoon in A&E instead of the royal Polo grounds... fair cop, I was rather reliant on him coming along as I was planning to down a few glasses of bubbly in celebration and would be needing a ride home ;-)

So I ad-libbed a bit with dessicated coconut and the addition of mint chiffonade, but I even made the shortcrust pastry with almonds myself, for once, despite the fact that kneading and rolling dough for something that is readily available at any supermarket is one of my least favourite activities in the kitchen... I came up with a new trick in the process which ensures that the dough gets perfectly flat without you using tons of flour which tends to creep into every corner of your kitchen or sticking to the worktop, the rolling pin and everything else in its vicinity: I place the doughball in a large, zip-lock plastic bag, about the size of the baking tray I am using, then roll it out in the bag - once the dough is evenly thick, I slit open the bag on all sides with a sharp knife, carefully lift the dough including the plastic layer on the bottom and flip it directly onto the baking tray I am using. This is the least messy way ever to roll out pastry (and only works in relatively small batches, of course... but I'm happy as Larry!).

Once the pastry base was rolled, grated coconut pressed into the base, then baked with a topping made from cream cheese, coconut milk and lemon juice and adorned with a touch of passion fruit icing on top, these were the most deliciously moist and tasty morsels of cheesecake I have had in a very long time and they certainly kept me far too busy to be treading back the turf at half-time...

You might be wary of the way these mini-cakes are produced: if you have loose-based mini-muffin tins, by all means use them - your yield will be increased considerably (almost double). However, in catering, you don't have time to faff around with pressing dough and scooping mix into mini-moulds, so you bake on a tray and use cookie cutters instead.
Waste of cake? Think again! Enjoy the left-over cake cuttings all by yourself, there's a time for everything and this is not the time for sharing ;-)

Other passion fruit ideas on thepassionatecook:
Deconstructed passion fruit curd pie (June 2007)
White chocolate & passion fruit tart (March 2007)
Passion fruit mousse in filo basket (February 2005)

Passion fruit & coconut cheesecakes*
(makes about 24 mini-cheesecakes and lots of left-overs to enjoy with your coffee over the following days)

For the base:
125 g self-raising flour
100 g butter (lightly salted)
100 g ground almonds
100 g sugar
1 egg yolk
30 g dessicated coconut

For the passion fruit icing:
3 large passion fruits
30 g butter (softened)
60 g icing sugar
1 tbsp corn flour

For the cheese topping:
600 g cream cheese (I used Philadelphia full fat)
125 ml coconut milk
2 eggs
1 tbsp lemon juice
150 g caster cugar

To decorate:
2 tbsp dessicated coconut
1 tbsp thinly sliced mint leaves

For the base, dice the butter and crumble in with the flour until the mixture ressembles breadcrumbs. Add the remaining ingredients and knead to a firm dough. Form a ball with the dough and place in the middle of a large zip-lock plastic bag, about the size of your cake tin (30 x 20 cm, 5 cm high). Close the bag, then transfer to the fridge to rest of 30 minutes.
After resting, roll out the dough evenly to about 2-3 cm height. Slice the sides of the bag open with a sharp knife, then lift and discard the top layer of plastic. Carefully lift the plastic bottom with the pastry, then flip into the buttered baking dish. Sprinkle with the dessicated coconut and press into the dough as much as you can, keeping the surface even. (If the coconut doesn't connect with the pastry base, the top and bottom are in danger of separating when you pick them up later).

Meanwhile, heat the oven to 175C. Bake the pastry for 10 minutes, then cool for another 10 minutes.

Prepare the cheese mix by beating all the ingredients until smooth and poor over the cooled base. Bake for 40 minutes, until set.

For the icing, prepare a passion fruit coulis by scraping the flesh and seeds into a pot, warming it up gently for about 2 minutes, then passing through a wide-meshed sieve, the holes just smaller than the seeds. The heat will make it easier to separate the seeds from the flesh. You will only be using 2 tbsp of the coulis, so keep the rest to enjoy in a glass of champagne some other day.

Combine the ingredients for the icing in a bowl and beat until smooth. Place in the fridge until the cake has completely cooled and you're just about to serve the cake.
Using a 5 cm round cookie cutter, cut individual mini-cheesecakes out of the whole cake, spread with the icing about half a cm thick, then sprinkle with coconut and mint.

* loosely based on a recipe in "nibbled"

Comments

[African Vanielje]

Johanna these look gorgeous, and I am firmly in the you can never have too many recipe books camp. Recipe books are like source books for artists. They are inspiration as well as instruction and who cares if you actually make something from them. You never know what little bits have stuck in your mind and are contributing towards a great creation. I consider a book that I regularly make 2 recipes out of a good buy. Very few have more than that. How could they, we are all so different.

[Gretchen Noelle]

WOW! Those look and sound incredible! I too love passionfruit...but I drink it more than bake with it. This may change my mind!

[peabody]

That is gorgeous!

[Wendy]

These are beautiful! So very dainty.

[foodie froggyf]

I love those mini cheesecakes. I bought a mini-cheesecake pan when I was in the US last year and it is amzing !

[gloria Baker]

I love these minicakes, they looks so lovely, your blog is so nice Gloria

[maninas: food matters]

This is a fantastic combination of flavours! I'm bookmarking this!

You've just reminded me that I have a Brazilian recipe for a fantastic passion fruit mousse, that I should make and post soon! Which reminds me, you could use concentrated passion fruit juice in the passionfruit icing, in case you can't find passion fruit sometime. i get concentrated passion fruit juice from a Brazilian shop around here (oxford).

[Petra]

Wie hübsch! Ich liebe Passionsfrüchte auch sehr - leider findet man sie hier in der kulinarischen Diaspora so selten.

[Windy]

I know what you mean when you were thinking to buy another new recipe book. Although I only have a few, sometime I just can't resist to have another one, esp when they are cheap.

By the way, the cheesecake looks really nice. I'm sure the passions fruit and the coconut have done the trick!

[Margaret]

Oooh lovely! Now I want one of those Johanna. I too have Eric's book, its fabulous.

[katha]

ich freue mich gerade sehr, dass ich dank deines safran-kommentars thepassionatecook.com entdecken durfte. feed schon abonniert. jetzt lese ich mich mal quer durch. maracujas sind klasse, neben himbeeren, pfirsichen und walderdbeeren gehören sie auch für mich zu den aromatischsten und interessantesten früchten - wenn sie reif (also schon schön schrumpelig) sind. liebe grüsse aus wien!

[desie the maybahay]

gorgeous looking little cakes. the passionfruit and coconut combo is a sure winner. hmm, will have to make these soon.

[Flo Bretzel]

Ohlala, these mini cakes look really great!

[Valli]

The passion fruit cheesecake looks incredible. So elegant with its light dusting of coconut..perfect for company. I can only imagine the flavour combinations!!!

[Rosa]

Wonderful! Those miniature cheesecakes look gorgeous and ever so cute!

Cheers,

Rosa

[Tartelette]

Absolutely gorgeous! Love catering for the simple reason that I get to make lots of minis and I feel like I am finally allowed to play with my food!

[maninas: food matters]

Hi Johanna, any luck with concentrated passion fruit juice? :)

[Abraham]

Johanna,

quizá la primera vez que probaste fruta de la pasión fue en Jungapeo. Tenemos ahí muchísima (kilos y kilos cada semana, de hecho). Y no sabíamos que se comía hasta que una vez Andrés las descubrió (él la conocía de cuando vivió en Colombia) e hicimos agua con ella. Luego le fuimos agregando otras frutas que se dan en la casa: mandarina, limón, naranja, guayaba y bautizamos la bebida como "Jungapunch" (¿la llegaste a probar?) Si no, a ver cuándo se animan a venir a visitarnos y lo preparamos juntos con fruta recién cortada.

Besos,

Abraham

[johanna]

ay, abraham, no sabes cuanto me encantaria ir, solo estamos esperando que henrik tenga unos cuantos anos ya ya no vamos. lo hecho tanto de menos, mi mexico lindo y querido y tengo ganas de ensenarle a chris y a mis hijos lo maravilloso que es ese pais. aqui nos vemos y si todavia se te antoja, nos damos vuelta por jungapeo ;-) (y por donde anda andres, quiere venir de pachanga cuando vayamos???)