Passion fruit sorbet

Our passion fruit vine is so productive I've got passion fruits coming out of my ears. My two main recipes are passion fruit curd, and this sorbet.
This recipe is a total hit. I have people fighting over tubs of it.

The recipe is from this site, (Drizzle and Dip) and I changed nothing, apart from leaving it every 2 -3 hours or so between beatings as my freezer doesn't freeze very quickly. It makes about 1 litre, enough for a standard ice-cream tub.

Ingredients
1 cup sugar
1 cup fresh orange juice
2 cups fresh passion fruit pulp (about 9-10 passion fruits)
2 large egg whites, whisked to form peaks

1. Heat orange juice and sugar over a low heat, and stir until dissolved
2. Add the passion fruit, stir and chill in the fridge
3. Freeze the mixture for 1 hour then fold in the beaten egg (preferably in a large mixing bowl)
4. Freeze again and beat every 2-3 hours until the mixture is frozen and well-mixed.
5. Leave to thaw for 10-15 mins before serving.

Cornflake Cake

Cornflakes have trouble staying crisp in a climate that averages about 75% humidity....so recipes that involve soggy cereal can be quite useful. This is my own invention but don't bother if you're on a diet.

'Dry' Ingredients
100g cornflakes
50g flaked almonds
25g flour
1 tsp baking powder
3 dried apricots, diced into small pieces

'Wet' Ingredients
100g chocolate (milk, caramel, whatever you like)
100g butter (preferably unsalted)
50g golden syrup (or 25g brown sugar + 25 g golden syrup)

Instructions 

1. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl
2. Put all the wet ingredients in a medium sized saucepan and melt over a low heat, stirring regularly until everything is melted and well mixed
3. Add the dry ingredients and stir well
4. Pour into a small baking tin lined with baking paper, level out and press down.
5. Cook for about 15 mins at 220 C until slightly browned
6. Remove and let cool before cutting into slices. Serve cold. Store in fridge in an airtight container.

Cardboard roll bracelets

This was a quick craft to keep my 3-year old daughter busy one Saturday morning while I was making the toilet roll Advent calendar!
I found a large cardboard tube that fitted onto her wrists, cut two pieces and just let her run free with paints, glue and decorative flowers. Once she was done I varnished them and added some gold foil around the edges. She did a great job!

Home-made advent calendar

Chocolate advent calendars on the equator are a really bad idea. So I decided to make one myself this year, from a whole load of empty cardboard tubes (toilet and kitchen rolls), crepe paper, tissue paper, cardboard, gold and silver paint and some glitter glue. The backing was an old quilter's cutting board that I painted with white wall paint. The tubes are covered in crepe paper inside and out and the lids are made from cardboard discs covered in crepe paper and held into place with small hair-bands. I traced all the numbers from cardboard and decorated them before gluing onto the lids. I filled it with loads of plastic tot that my daughter just loves; the little parts of a Playmobil set, some bracelets, etc.

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DIY doll's house shower

This is made from an After Eight box, a couple of straws, some beads and buttons, some plastic wrapping, a plastic clothes tag and the blister packaging from a packet of tablets.

How I made it

First I removed one side of the After Eight box but kept the fancy edge which I glued onto the new edge. I painted the edges with white acrylic paint, and lined the inside with sewing pattern paper that I'd painted with acrylic paints to give the impression of tiles. Then I glued a round plastic clothes tag onto the base to make the shower floor.

I covered the outsides, top and bottom with foam sheet

I made the shower unit from a bendy straw-  I glued 2 blisters from a pack of tablets half way down to make a soap dish, a piece of straw with a red and blue button either side to make taps, and a large flat button at the top to make the shower head. Once it was all glued firm I painted the whole lot with several layers of silver acrylic paint, and put black dots on the shower head.

I also glued silver beads along the top and sides to attach to the shower unit, and glued it in place.

I made the shower curtain from a piece of plastic wrapping- I painted hearts on with acrylic paint, then stuck circular stickers along the top and punched holes through with a hole-punch. I made the shower rail from a bendy straw with a pipe-cleaner threaded through and hooked the whole thing up.

'Piment'

‘Piment’ is dinner table staple in Gabon. It’s a fiery puree of minced chillies in oil, served as a condiment and usually smothered over meat. Traditionally, out in the villages where there’s no electricity, people store minced chillies in bottles of lemon juice which acts as a preservative, or they use small amounts of peanut or palm oil, and then use it up within a few days.

You can buy it in any market, but the best kinds are found in people’s homes. Usually it’s made with red chillies and their seeds and is blisteringly hot. A milder version uses green or yellow chillies with onion and garlic. Some people use olive oil, as I have here.

My version is generally considered rather woosey for your average Gabonese, as it is made with green chillies, quite a lot of onion and garlic, and I’ve removed the seeds. Keep the seeds in if you want to jack it up a notch, and reduce the onion if you think you're hard enough. The advantage of this recipe is it has lots of flavour that you can enjoy without fear of losing several layers of mouth lining in the process.

This makes about 400mls. A word of advice- wear rubber gloves if you want to avoid your hands feeling like they’ve been placed in battery acid for 3 hours.

Ingredients

8-10 green chillies

1 onion

3 cloves garlic

1/2 cup olive oil.

Instructions

1. Wash the chillies well and remove stalks and seeds.
2. Peel and roughly chop the onion, and peel the garlic.
3. Place all ingredients with some of the oil into a blender, and whizz for just a few seconds so everything is finely minced, but still has some solid form, i.e. not too pureed and pastey.
4. The onion will have released quite a lot of liquid, so scrape all the mixture into a frying pan, add the rest of the oil and sauté for 5 mins on medium heat to gently cook the mixture until all the moisture has gone.
5. Let cool and transfer to a clean jar. Stir in more oil if required.

Passion-fruit curd

An advantage of living in the tropics is that you can plant a seedling and watch it grow to reclaim an entire urban space back to nature in exponential time. I find that quite a comforting thought! We planted the seeds of one passion fruit and in a few months it had invaded the whole of our garden including the trees, the roof and the building next door.
Now it is tamed (with considerable effort, mind you), and in the height of the rainy season we can get 10-15 fruits off it a day! I have two favourite passion fruit recipes, this one and passion fruit sorbet. This is my simplified curd recipe which is a hybrid of Nigella Lawson's and BBC Good Food, and seems to be a big hit with my Gabonese lady friends. This makes about 2 small (200-250ml) jars worth.

Ingredients
About 200-220g passion fruit pulp (about 6-8 passion fruits)
3 eggs
100g unsalted butter
150g white sugar

Instructions
1. Beat the eggs and sugar together in a bowl.
2. Melt the butter slowly in a saucepan.
3. Whizz the passion fruit pulp in a food processor for about 4-5 seconds to separate the seeds from the pulp.
4. When the butter has melted, on a low heat use a sieve to strain the juice and as much pulp as possible into the butter. Stir, and keep the seeds to one side.
5. Add the egg/sugar mixture, and stir continuously over a low heat with a wooden spoon until it's thickened and creamy.
6. Optional step: stir in about 2 tbsp seeds,
7. Let cool for a few mins and pour into sterile jars. Keep in fridge.