New Yorker Magazine restaurant critic Hannah Goldfield describes tropical passion fruit as being “citrus-adjacent, but more complex: sweet, bright, savory, sour, and even a touch sulfuric,” In a recent article extolling passion fruit’s culinary attributes, Goldfield writes, “I find the flavor perhaps my single favorite, intoxicating.”
Virtuoso pastry chef Natasha Pickowicz, another passion fruit devotee, agrees: “Passion fruit’s intense acidity and unique transformative properties make it a dream ingredient for pastry chefs,” she says. It is “like citrus in that the addition of sugar or fat can enhance, rather than mute, its bracing, shocking flavor… a singular, sharp contrast (and refreshing reprieve) to rich, creamy or buttery components.” As an example, Picowicz cites a “knockout layer cake” in her new book, More Than Cake (Artisan Books, 2023), in which she pairs the fruit with coconut, vanilla bean and tequila. Passion fruit also surfaces in many other Picowicz recipes from jellies to sorbet to spreadable curds. “It’s a perfect fruit with endless possibilities,” she says.
While passion fruit has long been a traditional dessert and beverage in South America, where the vine flourishes, now, with wider accessibility of the fresh fruit and frozen pulp, it is gaining new popularity among dessert professionals, playing both starring and supporting roles in pastries, pies and pavlovas.
This winter, two highly anticipated new New York restaurants featured passion fruit desserts on their menus. At Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s 425 Park in midtown Manhattan, executive pastry chef Sydney Hursa prepared a passion fruit gelee from fresh pulp for her multi layered Dark Chocolate Mousse. “I like to combine different ingredients in unusual ways,” notes Hursa, who has worked with uber chefs Daniel Boulud and Daniel Humm as well as at the Jean-Georges flagship. She fills a chocolate shell with candied hazelnut praline, a slice of devil foods cake, mounds of chocolate mousse, the passion fruit gelee, and a blanket of coffee granite. The surprise icy topping reflects another 2024 trend: shaved ice, popularized by the Japanese kakigori.
Café Carmellini in Noho, the fine dining addition to chef/owner Andrew Carmellini’s portfolio of casual establishments, is surprising guests with Passion Fruit Chiboust. “The chiboust is a not very well known dessert, especially the way we serve it,” explains executive pastry chef Jeffrey Wurtz. “It is essentially a free form soufflé, which gives us a more unique way of presenting. It is also a very versatile dessert that can be used with many different flavor profiles. . .
“The base is compressed pineapple made with freshly diced pineapple mixed with a lime simple syrup that is then compressed in a sous vide bag under pressure; the passion fruit curd center is made with a puree.” Wurtz serves the chiboust with a side of coconut sorbet.
Passion fruit and whipped egg white is also an appealing combination for other pastry chefs.
Michelle Palazzo, Director of Pastry Operations for the Frenchette Group created Passion Fruit Floating Island for their acclaimed Le Rock restaurant in Rockefeller Center. Le Rock executive pastry chef Sarah Smith serves it at lunch; passion fruit under an ethereal mound of meringue floating on creme anglaise and topped with a crunchy, lacy lattice made with seeds of the fruit.
In Florida, with an abundance of tropical fruits readily available, pastry chef Michel Sanchez at Evelyn’s in the Four Seasons Hotel, Ft. Lauderdale, channels the meringue / passion fruit profile with pavlova. Celebrating the bounty of the region, Sanchez’ Tropical Fruit Pavlova builds from citrus guava sorbet in the center with banana cremeux piped on top, slices of mango arranged in ribbons, passion fruit coulis made by reducing passion fruit and mango pulp thickened with agar, and a sprinkle of fresh lime zest.
California is also a destination for passion fruit enthusiasts where vines flourish in home gardens and fruits are produced commercially at farms such as Rincon Tropics. In the New Yorker article, Goldfield describes her visit to Rincon owner Nick Brown, a sixth-generation farmer who ships fruit cross country to both consumers and restaurants. One of Brown’s customers, Naomi Shim of Doubting Thomas, a café in Los Angeles historic Filipinotown, renowned for its passion fruit pies, provided a slice for Goldfield to enjoy on the plane back to New York: “[The slice was] …a wedge of vivid custard as luscious as melted gelato topped with whipped creme fraiche and a spoonful of seeds,” Shim said. . . “The custard is composed of passion fruit puree, sweetened condensed milk and fresh farm yolks.” She also noted that the graham cracker macadamia nut crust was one she had been perfecting for years. “The textural contrast was very important to me,” she said. “We make the graham cracker dough from scratch using honey, milk, wheat flour and crushed macadamia nuts. We let it rest overnight and bake it off until golden and crisp.”
Bright yellow/orange passion fruit pulp attracts pie makers for its rainbow hue as well as its flavor. Nicole Rucker of Fat + Flour in Culver City, Ca., dubbed “Queen of Pie” in the Los Angeles Times this winter, was praised by the paper’s restaurant critic, Bill Addison for her “custardy passion fruit tangerine chess pie, hidden in whipped cream as thick as a cloud bank.”
Even more exalted in the press this year is the Pearl Pie served at Superiority Burger in New York’s East Village. Inspired by pastry chef Darcy Spence and sous pastry chef Katie Toles, who grew up in Hawaii where the fruit, known as Lilikoi, is abundant, the pie has rotated on and off the menu in several variations with either a Ritz cracker of graham cracker crust. In Bon Appetit’s Best Desserts We Ate at New Restaurants in 2023, executive editor Sonia Chopra praised Pearl Pie: “…the custard in question was passionfruit and the slice was blanketed with tapioca – the soft chewy pearls bursting with the tangy custard and the gentle crunch of the crust. A total textural victory, the whole thing stunned me. Creamy, fruity, and a little tart, it became my ne plus ultra for custard pies.” New York Magazine, also including Pearl Pie in its best of the year list, revealed that the vegan custard is made with tofu and coconut, calling it memorable, something entirely new.
Other chefs are looking beyond pie crusts for their passion fruit fillings. Heather Hutton, pastry chef at Honeysuckle Rose a highly praised new restaurant in Charleston, S.C. with an eight-course tasting menu, fills cream puffs with a pureed passion fruit and goldenberry pastry cream — the latter a fruit in the nightshade family with a similar citrus/tropical flavor — then spoons in some fresh passion fruit and goldenberry that, she says. “gives it a nice pop.” The dish is accompanied by Thai basil syrup and orange blossom ice cream.
At Eleven Madison Park Daniel Humm comments: “Our Passion fruit dessert is inspired by a Japanese Mochi (or a Chinese Tangyuan) – made with passion fruit ice cream wrapped in a perfectly soft and chewy rice dough.” Also Asian inspired, the Black Sesame Passion Fruit tart at Lady Wong’s patisserie in Manhattan’s East Village, has been widely heralded in the press. A signature dish from chef duo Malaysian Seleste Tan and Morgan Anthony, the dome shaped pastry’s cacao sable base anchors layers of chocolate cake, sesame crunch, passion fruit caramel and black sesame mousse. Nikita Richardson of The New York Times, who included it on her list of 23 desserts she couldn’t stop thinking about, declared: “This year I realized that passion fruit is my favorite of all the fruit flavors. This is the pastry that brought me to that realization.”
Artisan chocolatier Fritz Knipschildt, adds another element to the passion fruit / Asian flavor profile with Yuzu-Passionfruit Coconut Cake. Part of a new line of desserts recently introduced by the House of Knipschildt brand and sold nationally by Goldbelly, the cake layers coconut genoise sponge, passion fruit pastry cream and genoise sponge, soaked with yuzu syrup. Knipschildt goes in a different direction with Passionfruit & Ancho Chili Bon Bons, one of a parade of passion fruit chocolate bars ranging from Melissa Coppel’s Passion Fruit Vanilla Marzipan with chocolate ganache and almond marzipan, topped with crunchy cocoa nibs to Fruition’s Passion Fruit Dark Milk with Elderflower and Popping Candy.
In an article in Southern Living about 2024 trends, David Tamarkin, Editorial Director of King Arthur Baking Company, concluded: “Passion fruit is everywhere and for good reason: it is indefinably delicious, brings gorgeous bright acidity to baked goods, and can be used in tons of ways.”
(This article appeared in the Spring 2024 issue of Pastry Arts Magazine)
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