Passionfruit Cream Puffs #Recipe by @LibbyKlein

 Libby Klein I love cream puffs. They are very easy to make gluten free because the custard filling is thickened with corn starch, making it gluten free to begin with. This is the same recipe as my cream puff swans, only with the addition of tart passion fruit puree in the custard, and an easier method of making the shells.

You can make cute little puffs instead of the monster puffs I always seem to make. I tend to forget just how much these pouf when they bake. To make tiny bit sized puffs, your batter should be pipped or spooned smaller than a golf ball. They will double in size.

Passionfruit Cream Puffs

Yield: 12 large cream puffs

Choux Paste

Ingredients
1 stick (½ cup) unsalted butter
1 cup water
Hefty pinch salt
1 cup flour OR gluten-free flour blend that has xanthan gum already added
*if your gluten-free flour blend does NOT have Xanthan gum already added (like Bob’s Red Mill does not) add ½ teaspoon xanthan gum to the recipe
4 eggs

Passionfruit Pastry Cream

Ingredients

2 cups whole milk

4 egg yolks

1/2 cup sugar
5 Tbsp cornstarch
Heavy pinch salt

1/2 cup passionfruit puree, thawed if frozen

2 Tbsp butter

Later:
1 ½ cups heavy whipping cream
 

DIRECTIONS:

 Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F. In a heavy saucepan, add 1 stick of butter and 1 cup of water and bring to a boil. 

When the butter is melted, remove the pan from the heat and stir in the flour all at once, mixing quickly (the mixture will form a ball). Let it stand for a couple of minutes to cool a few degrees. Transfer to the bowl of your stand mixer. Using the paddle attachment, add the eggs to the flour mixture, one at a time until you have a silky dough. 

  

Scoop into small rounds on a parchment lined cookie sheet. Dip your fingertips into cold water and smooth the mounds of dough into pretty balls. They will puff us as they bake.

Bake at 375° F. for 30-35 minutes until golden brown. Poke a hole in the side of each one with a knife and put them back in the oven for 2 minutes. Take them out and let them cool.

Make the pastry cream.

In a heavy saucepan over medium heat, bring the milk to a simmer. Meanwhile, in a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks with the sugar, cornstarch, and salt.

Bring the mixture in the saucepan to a boil while stirring continuously. Continue to simmer until the mixture thickens. Remove from the heat and gradually whisk hot milk into the egg-yolk mixture a little at a time to bring up the temperature of the yolks. Add everything back into the saucepan and add the passionfruit puree. Cook over medium-low heat while whisking continuously until the custard is so thick it coats a spoon, like soft pudding. 

Now cook it until it boils for one minute. It will be very thick even while hot.

Remove from heat and stir in 2 Tbsp of butter. Transfer the custard to a shallow dish and cover it with plastic wrap down to the surface of the custard. Chill until the custard is completely cold. The plastic wrap won't even cling to the custard it's so thick.

In a separate bowl, beat the 1 ½ cups heavy whipping cream until stiff peaks form.

With a rubber spatula, fold a little of the whipped cream into the custard to loosen it up. 

Then fold all the custard into the whipped cream. Chill again until thick and stiff.

Now there are 2 ways to fill your cooled cream puffs. You can either slice them in half like hamburger buns and dollop pastry cream in the middle, or you can transfer the pastry cream into a piping bag – and using the hole you poked into them at the end of baking, squeeze pastry cream into the shell until it won’t take anymore. You’ll know it’s full because the shell will swell and the pastry cream with start to push back out. 

Top your cream puffs with a dusting of powdered sugar if desired. Leave me a comment and let me know what your favorite pastry is.

Layla Virtue, a blue-haired, 30-something recovering alcoholic and former cop is trying to reinvent herself as a musician—between AA meetings, dodging eccentric neighbors at her trailer park, and reconnecting with her mysterious dad—in this ​unforgettable new mystery brimming with hilarity and heart.

Layla is taking her new life one day at a time from the Lake Pinecrest Trailer Park she now calls home. Being alone is how she likes it. Simple. Uncomplicated. Though try telling that to the group of local ladies who are in relentless pursuit of Layla as their new BFF, determined to make her join them for coffee and donuts.

After her first career ended in a literal explosion, Layla’s trying to eke out a living as a rock musician. It’s not easy competing against garage bands who work for tacos and create their music on a computer, while all she has is an electric guitar and leather-ish pants. But Layla isn’t in a position to turn down any gig. Which is why she’s at an 8-year-old’s birthday party, watching as Chuckles the Clown takes a bow under the balloon animals. No one expects it will be his last . . .

Who would want to kill a clown—and why? Layla and her unshakable posse are suddenly embroiled in the seedy underbelly of the upper-class world of second wives and trust fund kids, determined to uncover what magnetic hold a pudgy, balding clown had over women who seem to have everything they could ever want. Then again, Layla knows full well that people are rarely quite what they seem—herself included . . .

Libby Klein writes ridiculously funny murder mysteries from her Northern Virginia office with a very naughty calico Persian named Miss Eliza Doolittle, and a sweet black Lab named Vader. She can name that tune for 70s and 80s rock in the first few notes, and she's translated her love of classic rock into her Layla Virtue Mysteries. Libby was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that prevents her from eating gluten without exploding. Because bread is one of her love languages, she includes the recipes for gluten free goodies in her Cape May based Poppy McAllister series. Most of her hobbies revolve around travel, and eating, and eating while traveling. She insists she can find her way to any coffee shop anywhere in the world, even while blindfolded. Follow all of her nonsense on her website www.LibbyKleinBooks.com/Newsletter/

No-Bake Passion Fruit Chili Cheesecake #Recipe by @LibbyKlein

 

Libby Klein I'm obsessed with using chili and fruit in cheesecake. Probably because I can't tolerate spicy food, so those chilis would never work for me under normal circumstances. But once combined with the cream cheese, the heat mellows and lovely fruit notes are revealed. The passion fruit gel on top gives a delightful zing that pairs nicely with the cheesecake and balances the sweetness.

I wouldn’t normally make a no bake cheesecake since I prefer the traditional baked dessert, but I wanted to give you the recipe Poppy used during the Restaurant Weeks are Murder competition. It was a Chopped-style mystery basket competition for local Cape May chefs to win their restaurant on the cover of the South Jersey Dining Guide. This no bake version uses gelatin instead of eggs. Mini spring form pans enable the cheesecake to set up quickly. You could make one big 8 or 9-inch cheesecake if you’d rather. You would just need to let it chill for several hours to be firm enough to cut.

Use rubber or latex kitchen gloves when cutting chili peppers – remove gloves and don’t touch anything the gloves have touched when you’re finished.

No-Bake Passion Fruit Chili Cheesecake

Ingredients

Cheesecake Filling

1 envelope Knox plain gelatin

3 Tablespoons cold water

¾ cup frozen passion fruit pulp, thawed (you could also use fresh passion fruits, pulped, and strained.)

*1-2 chili peppers

1 can dulce de leche (or sweetened condensed milk - about 1 ¼ cups)

16 oz cream cheese, softened

Almond meal – a few tablespoons to dust the bottom of the spring form pans. You could also make yourself a crust if you want, but Poppy just made the cheesecake without a cookie bottom.

Rubber kitchen gloves

*I used red serrano chilis for a gentle heat. If you want more of a bite you can use habaneros.

 

Passion Fruit Jelly for the top:

1 envelope Knox plain gelatin

3 Tablespoons cold water

4 oz passion fruit juice

¼ cup sugar

Instructions

1. Put on your rubber gloves. Seed and chop your chilis. Don’t touch anything. Don’t rub your eye or scratch your face. When your chilis are chopped very small, add them to your passion fruit juice. Clean up the area and equipment you used and throw away your gloves.

2. Mix the gelatin with the water and let it bloom. Then, microwave the gelatin for 20 -30 seconds so it melts. Add it to the passion fruit juice and peppers.

3. In a mixing bowl, whip your softened cream cheese until it’s smooth. Doing this now will help the finished batter not be lumpy. When the cheese is fluffy and smooth, add the dulce de leche (or sweetened condensed milk.) At the lowest speed, beat for 1 to 1.5 minutes until the mixture is well-blended. Add in the passion fruit juice, fold or beat at the lowest speed until the mixture is incorporated.

4. Sprinkle the bottom of your spring form pan/s with almond meal. Enough to cover the bottom and make releasing the cheesecake easier.

5. Pour the cream cheese mixture on top. Smooth out the surface because what it looks like now is what it’s going to look like later. It isn’t going to move. Refrigerate until set. 3o minutes for minis. Several hours for a large cheesecake.

B. Passion Fruit Jelly for the top:

1. Mix the gelatin with the water and let it bloom. Then, microwave the gelatin for 20 -30 seconds so it melts. Add in 1/4 cup of sugar and microwave another 40-60 seconds to melt. Keep your eye on it so it doesn’t boil over. Using oven mits or a towel, remove bowl from microwave. Add the 4oz passion fruit juice that you thawed and set aside.

2. When this mixture is nice a cool, it doesn’t have to be cold - but it can’t be warm- and the cheesecake is cold, gently pour the passion fruit liquid on top of the cheesecakes. Chill for another 2 – 4 hours.

3. When you’re ready to serve, use a butter knife to gently go around the inside of the spring form pan to help release the cheesecake from the liner. The cheesecake should come off the bottom easily because of the almond meal.

Gluten-free baker Poppy McAllister and her aunt Ginny are looking forward to a quiet, homey Christmas at their B&B in Cape May, but unfortunately, death isn’t taking a holiday this year . . .

Ever since Thanksgiving, Poppy and her pals have been left with an unsolved mystery of the romantic kind. But at least this mystery isn’t the kind that involves murder. That all changes when the body of a fish supplier is discovered in the kitchen of her ex’s restaurant—and he’s frozen, not fresh.

For once, it’s not Poppy who tripped over the corpse, yet she can’t escape being drawn in since the victim has a note taped to him reading Get Poppy. Figures—an engagement ring isn't labeled, but the dead guy is addressed to her. Now, while Aunt Ginny plans a tree-trimming party and pressures Poppy to decode a mysterious old diary, the amateur sleuth is asked to “unofficially” go undercover at the restaurant to help the police. Until then, the only crime Poppy had been dealing with was Figaro’s repeated thefts of bird ornaments from the tree; now it looks like it’s going to be a murder-y Christmas after all.

 

Libby Klein grew up in Cape May, NJ where she attended high school in the '80s. Her 
classes revolved mostly around the Culinary sciences and Drama, with one brilliant semester in Poly-Sci that may have been an accident. She loves to drink coffee, bake gluten-free goodies, collect fluffy cats, and translate sarcasm for people who are too serious. She writes from her Northern Virginia office where she serves a very naughty black smoke Persian named Sir Figaro Newton. You can keep up with her shenanigans by signing up for her Mischief and Mayhem Newsletter on her website. www.LibbyKleinBooks.com/Newsletter/

Passion Fruit Revisited

A quick update to my passion fruit post from last week. Here is what the fruit looked like when I first bought it.

Here is what the rest of the same fruit looked like at the store a week later.

Ripe? Too ripe? Maybe this later version tastes better eaten raw, as some people have suggested, but would you buy it in a store?

Lemon Cake with Passion Fruit Syrup

I should just stay away from that one display in my local market. You know, the one where they put all the exotic and unusual fruits and vegetables. You readers of MLK have already been introduced to several of them, but the pesky store just keeps adding more. This time it was passion fruit.

I can’t remember ever eating passion fruit. I certainly haven’t cooked with it. I have no idea what it tastes like—tart? sweet? tangy? I don’t know how to tell if it’s ripe or not. I don’t know what it should look like—smooth and shiny or wrinkled?

So why on earth am I using it here? Curiosity, pure and simple. Isn’t that what motivates both mystery writers and readers? The “what if . . .” Maybe passion fruit will rock my world. I won’t know until I try.

I don’t think you’re supposed to eat it on its own, so I needed something to pour it over somehow. I wanted something lemony-flavored. Couldn’t find any recipes online that sounded right, so I defaulted to one of my long-time friendly cookbooks, Bistro Cooking by Patricia Wells, and found a lemon cake recipe there that made its debut appearance here in MLK in 2015.

But of course I changed it up. I didn’t want two whole loaf cakes, I wanted small individual cakes, and I happen to have a lot of vintage small cake molds, which were about the right size, so I cut the recipe in half. And I cut back on the grated lemon rind a bit—I know, it gives a punchier flavor, but I wanted the passion fruit to stand out, not the lemon.

So here we go, plunging into the unknown world of passion (fruit)!

Passion Fruit Syrup

Okay, how do I get the passion fruit into my cake? I looked online, No two recipes seems to agree. What is the pulp? The gooey stuff with all those hard black seeds floating around in it? The much harder white stuff around the edges? Got me. So I took the simplest recipe and used whatever I could get out of the interior of my fruits. (Word of warning: the skin is really tough! I needed a serrated knife.)

Whole passion fruit

Sliced in half

Gunk scraped out (note black seeds)

Simmering syrup

Ingredients:

1 cup water
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup passion fruit pulp

Combine in a saucepan, bring to a boil, and boil until the sugar dissolves. Reduce to a simmer and cook until the mixture thickens. Strain! Chill in the refrigerator. (Note: another recipe I found said to puree in a blender with the seeds. I passed on that.)


Lemon Cake

Ingredients (full recipe--I used half):

2-1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
5 large eggs
1-1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup crème fraîche (or substitute heavy cream)
7 Tblsp (3-1/2 oz) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1/2 cup fresh-squeezed lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla
Grated zest of 4 lemons


Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter your baking molds.

Combine the flour and baking powder.

In the large bowl of a stand mixer, combine the eggs and sugar and mix until well blended.

With the mixer at low speed, slowly add (in the following order): the crème fraîche, the flour mixture, the melted butter, the lemon juice, the vanilla, and the lemon zest. Beat until very smooth.

Scoop into your molds. (Mine held about one-quarter cup each, and I used an ice cream scoop. Do not overfill, because the batter does puff up in baking.) My pan holds eight, and a half-recipe of the above fit nicely. You could just as easily use a muffin tin. 

Place them in the center of the oven and bake until golden and a toothpick comes out clean--about 20-25 minutes. (Keep an eye on them so they don’t get too brown.)

Remove the pans from the oven and cool in the pans on a rack.


The Big Finish

Place a small cake on a plate (slice a bit off the top, which will be the bottom, if it won’t sit flat).

Ladle some of the passion fruit syrup around the cake, kind of like a dunking pool (Heck, you can pour it all over the thing, once you decide you like the flavor.)

What did I think? The passion fruit definitely has a flavor of its own, and doesn’t taste like any other fruit I’ve tried. It’s a little tart, and definitely perfumey. I may experiment some more. (My husband expected it to taste like papaya, but once he’d tasted the syrup he said it didn’t.)

Cruel Winter (County Cork Mystery #5), coming March 14 (but who's counting?).

There are no papayas growing in Ireland, as far as I know. And it's winter and snowing in the town of Leap, where a band of people get snowbound for a night in Sullivan's Pub. And solve an old murder, in the best Irish tradition: talking.

Kirkus Reviews said some really nice things about the book this week:

Move over, Agatha Christie: a pub owner in County Cork fancies herself a young Miss Marple. . . Connolly's (A Turn for the Bad, 2016, etc.) heroine clearly has a gift for solving mysteries, and the interesting characters she presents warts and all make for a fine read in the classic style. 

Available for pre-order at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

www.sheilaconnolly.com