High tea edition vol 2: Passionfruit Pastilles

So last time, I talked about the Rosemary and Bay truffles, and gave an overview of the high tea menu.

Today, it's on to the Passionfruit pastilles - probably the most popular dish (apart from fruit mince pies, because I make a mean fruit mince pie courtesy of Nigella).

Passionfruit Pastilles
Heston Blumenthal at Home

So this was fun, if a little nerve wracking as I wasn't sure if it was going to work!

I made a half batch because I didn't have a lot of moulds, and even then it made plenty. I also used the pulp that comes in jars in the fruit and veg section, because I couldn't get the actual fruit. (It worked fine). I found it really interesting that there isn't any gelatin in the pastilles - just pectin and sugars and flavour. Kind of super set jam.

Process:

1. Puree passionfruit pulp
2. Mix the sugar, pectin and glucose with the pureed pulp
3. Heat to 108 degrees *harder than it sounds
4. Add lemon juice
5. Pour into moulds, cool.
6. Roll in sugar

Which all left me realise it is much like making caramel. Let's see...

Assemble your ingredients

I got the pectin from the health food store rather than a speciality grocer. Thanks to an excellent tip from a co-worker.

Puree your passionfruit pulp

I was a little unsure about leaving the seeds in. Husband felt they'd be better seedless - just keeping the flavour, but most guests were happy with them in. ("It's like actual passionfruit, isn't it. Because that has seeds, so you expect them")  Of course, removing the seeds would be a pain and also greatly reduce your weight of passionfruit pulp. Maybe if you have them growing in your yard, but at $5 a small jar... I'm happy to keep the seeds in.

 

Mix the sugar, pectin and glucose with the pureed pulp

This was labelled as "citrus pectin". I don't know if there are many kids, but it worked fine.

Pop it in and mix it up.

 Heat to 108 degrees 

*harder than it sounds

So there isn't a lot of photos of this, because it is very difficult to juggle a spatula for stirring, and an electronic thermometer and a hot saucepan and it's really very hot. It also took much, much longer than I expected.

It got to 100 (Celsius) or so  without any trouble, but then stopped for ages, and then stop again at around 104... and so on. It took maybe 20-30 minutes? I'm not sure, it felt like forever, and it was very awkward standing so close of the boiling sugar of threatening doom...I got really worried it just wasn't going to get there at all, and nearly took them off early. The colour went from a light-ish yellow to a very dark yellow-brown.

Once it hit the magic number it took it off very quickly! Then lemon juice goes in then. No photos, boiling passionfruit scented caramel stuff, not enough hands for photos.

Pour into moulds

Despite doing a half mix, I still had extra, so used some left over mini muffin silicon cups.

 Let them cool.

 Then, very nervously... pop them out!

 Roll them in sugar...

 

 I was taken aback by how great they looked. Yay!

Things I learned:

• There is a world of confectionery out there. I may need to investigate further.

Verdict:

Other then the significant nerves over the getting-to-the-right-temperature problem, these weren't very difficult barring the usual dealing with molten sugar issue.

Product wise... they are really intensely flavoured and a soft, but not too soft texture. They are not the hard kind of jube, more like those fancy pastilles you might give as gifts.  Personally, I found the flavour too strong. But I was the only person to feel that way.

I'm tempted to buy about another 3 of the silicon trays, they do make the finished product look much more like the real deal.

Guest opinions:

Very popular, though more so for some than others. As in, for those who loved them, I could use them as gold currency. I now am tempted to try the caramelised apple variety...

Next: Chocolate sauce for Madeleines. For reals this time. ;)

Heston Blumenthals's Chocolate Truffles

So this is a lazy, getting-back-into-it post. Home life has been a tad busy, so not a lot of dinner-partying going on.

But then I had a birthday to go to - an excellent day to make something.

I went easy on myself, and selected Heston's Chocolate Truffles recipe.

You can see a copy of it here, on the SBS website. It's also found (in a flavoured version) in
Heston at Home. He also makes them on the associated How to Cook Like Heston TV show.

Really, they are dreadfully easy. Make ganache. Roll it into balls and coat in something. See? Two steps. Painfully straightforward. 

But the real question is... does it live up to the promise?

Steps:

1. Heat up the cream and melt chocolate (separately)
2. Mix together
3. Chill
4. Roll into balls, roll balls in chosen outer layer.

I decided to do two flavours - one, the as-written salted dark chocolate and a straight milk chocolate version. I was tempted by the rosemary and bay flavoured ones in the book, but as these were a gift and for a party, I decided to play safe. Or so I thought.

Here is everything for both the milk chocolate/hazelnut meal version and the dark chocolate/cocoa rolled versions.

Heat up the cream

So I was doing the one from the website, so no extra flavouring or infusion necessary.

 

The heated cream has a teaspoon of salt added. (I omitted this for the milk chocolate version)

 Melt the chocolate

Admission: I melt my chocolate in the microwave in 30 second increments, stirring each 30 seconds. Easy, quick and I've never had it seize due to steam (unlike the water bowl method).  (If you're curious - 300g? around 1:30 or so.)

 Mix the cream into the melted chocolate in batches.

 Okay, all ready to go into the lined container. My lasagne pan was near-perfect size.

 Then I repeated that for the milk chocolate minus the salt.

Then they sit on the bench to cool down. Then into the fridge (in my case overnight - its four hours on the bench then six in the fridge, in theory).

 Okay, all chilled. This is the dark chocolate - it was too hard to work straight from the fridge, so I left it to warm up a little.

 And did the milk chocolate instead. This was noticeably softer. I think I would probably drop the amount of cream in a milk chocolate version in future to maybe 200-250g instead of 300g

Then just scoop balls of ganache, and then roll them in your outer layer - for the milk chocolate version I used ground hazelnuts.

  Rolled in hazelnut and looking pretty.

Then did the same for cocoa for the dark chocolate ones. I really wish I had a melon baller - I suspect this would have been much easier.I ended up using my round spoon measures in the main, it gave a nice shape and size without a lot of handling. Rolling them in my hands was messy and not worth it.

 Finished dark chocolate ones..

 But don't do this if you want a clean bench! Even when it's good, it's pretty messy.

End result:
Gift all ready, with extras to share at the party.

Lessons learned:

• Buy a $2 melon baller.
• Milk chocolate behaves slightly differently to dark, so reduce the cream proportion.

Guest opinions 

Interestingly (to me) I think I had the strongest reaction to a Heston dish to date .. (maybe everyone has been too polite previously?)  One guest tried the salted dark chocolate one and loudly proclaimed, "Oh God, that's disgusting! All I can taste is salt! .... I'd rather it was bitter!" To be fair, the poor guy didn't know I'd made them. In his (possible?) defence.. I do think that 1 teaspoon of salt was too much - I didn't find it overpowering but you could probably dial it back to 1/2 a teaspoon and still get the effect.

That said, several other guests liked them as they were - and a few noted that it was  just so unexpected - not bad but not what they were expecting (you get kind of used to that sort of thing for Heston I think...)

I think the dutch cocoa (which is what I generally use) possibly added to the contrast being fairly bitter in itself. (The cocoa "has a real kick", one guest noted)

The milk chocolate ones were a very popular (though a little too soft to my mind) and so probably a safer bet for a more "generic" / unadventurous palette. 

Verdict
I'm tempted to try a slightly-less salty version so the salted flavour is less pronounced, or perhaps one of the flavoured versions. They are pretty easy to whip up - maybe I'll just consider it next time I have leftover ganache from icing a cake. 

(Since I largely use ganache for cake icing, eating balls of it rolled in nuts etc. felt very decadent.)


Next: Not sure, next weekend I need to make Christmas puddings, so no Heston here - just Stephanie Alexander!