Finally, lesser-seen tropical fruits are popping up in the freezer section of grocery stores across America! It started with dragonfruit, or pitaya, and the company bringing it all is Pitaya Foods. They rebranded last year and expanded their frozen tropical fruit line from just dragonfruit to include frozen jackfruit, watermelon, acai berry, coconut, and the one we're focusing on today: passion fruit.
What is passion fruit?
First off, it seems you can use the space in between passion and fruit, or not, and it refers to the same thing. I should stick to one version, so for the sake of what the brand uses, I'll put a space in between the words. Passion fruit is an unusual fruit. It's tropical and native to South America. It's a purplish oval on its exterior, but the inside is a sunny shade of orange, and is filled with seeds that can be eaten. This technically makes the passion fruit a berry, but don't eat the rind, it is not edible.
I've never seen passion fruit sold fresh in grocery stores that I can recall. If it would be anywhere, I'd imagine you can find it at Hispanic grocery stores, tiendas, and supermercados. Even my Whole Foods doesn't seem to have it in stock (right now at least).
How is frozen passion fruit?
Being I've never had fresh passion fruit, I can't compare it to this. The only other passionfruit I've had was a frozen puree I found one time at a supermercado!
These frozen passion fruit chunks are much easier to handle since it's about a 1 inch cube. This makes it simple to add to a blender for smoothies, or anywhere else. They look like little orange sugared jelly candies, but don't go thinking they will taste like that just because they look that way.
Passion fruit can be VERY TART! It's best to taste one cube on its own before adding it into any recipe, so you can adjust for the tartness. I only added a small handful to a smoothie, and even then I added sweetness in the form of banana, pineapple chunks, pineapple juice, and mango. If you like sour, you'll love passion fruit. Even if you don't love sour, you can enjoy passion fruit, albeit in much smaller quantities.
What can I make with passion fruit?
You can make a lot of great desserts with passion fruit. Anything where you'd use citrus is a great canvas for substituting passion fruit. One of my absolute favorite recipes is this passion fruit curd. It's amazing stirred into plain yogurt and topped with shredded coconut.
How about passion fruit and lemon meringue tartlets?
A very pink blackberry panna cotta tart with passion fruit on top.
Passion fruit lemon loaf cake.
Health benefits of passion fruit
Passion fruit has lots of health benefits, like vitamin A, C, potassium, and magnesium. It is low on the glycemic index, which means it won't rocket your blood sugar up like other fruits with a high GI will.
Looking for more fruity desserts? Try dragonfruit chocolate chip cookies, orange pie, and small batch fruit salad!