Feijoa Recipes

Feijoas are really one of the most versatile fruit available, as they can be used sweet or savoury, fresh or frozen, and go well with anything where you might normally use common fruits like apple or banana. (muffins, cakes, loaves, crumbles etc)

Here are some of the ways I use feijoas -

• Use in muffins. My favourite is with ginger and wholemeal flour.
• Use in cakes, especially in anything using apple, banana, coconut, pineapple and ginger ( the feijoas seem to blend perfectly with these flavours)
• Make your own gelato and icecream. The picture on the right is Feijoa and Ginger Gelato on strawberry tarts, from Arnica Restaurant on the Sunshine Coast... delicious and made with our feijoas!
• Add chopped feijoas to salads. Not only a taste sensation, the vitamin C will enhance your absorption of iron from cereals and plant foods in the meal.
• The feijoa flower petals are sweet and edible - great in salads or as a garnish.
• Use in a fresh salsa: try chopped celery, tomatoes, red onion, avocado and feijoa. Add chilli ,mint, coriander and a generous squeeze of lemon.
• Add to apple for a delicious pie filling.
• Grill with balsamic vinegar and brown sugar and add to pork dishes as a condiment.
• Poach in a little sugar syrup with a knob of ginger.
• Spoon over cereal with yoghurt.
• Add to juices and smoothies – try feijoa, apple juice and strawberry frozen yoghurt – my personal favourite!
• Mix into fruit salad with fresh fruit.
• Make a feijoa crumble: top fruit with a mix of rolled oats, sliced almonds, brown sugar and coconut flakes.
• Make jam drops with our fabulous Feijoa Jam range - see some pictured on the right.
   

There are lots of recipes available now via the web, so I thought I’d just post my favourites, with any comments on how it went, and a photo of the end result before the family attacked!

Feijoa chocolate cake.
This recipe came from the fantastic thinkingaboutfood blog and is a great alternative to a plain old chocolate cake. When first baked the spices somewhat override the feijoa, but if you bake day prior and keep it, the feijoa shines through. I have found that most cakes with feijoa keep and freeze very well and often improve the next day. Even my teenage son, a famous chocolate cake connoisseur, likes this cake!

185g butter
3/4 c caster sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 c peeled chopped feijoas (or frozen pulp)
2 tbsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2c SR flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 c cocoa
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 c sour cream. (or full cream plain yoghurt)

Heat oven to 180c.
Combine feijoas, brown sugar and cinnamon in bowl and set aside.
Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time.
Stir sour cream into feijoa mix and combine well.
Sift dry ingredients into creamed butter/sugar/eggs and add in feijoa mix, combine well. Transfer batter into prepared tin (I use a ring tin) and smooth top evenly. Bake 40-45mins, or until skewer/knife comes out clean. Sit for 5 mins before turning out.

Ice with either plain icing or a sour cream ganache – Nigella Lawsons’ is recommended on the blog and is superb.

Our next favourite and most-often baked cake is a semi-healthy almond feijoa cake, which also keeps really well and also becomes more distinctively feijoa the next day. It’s a great tea-cake and uses honey instead of sugar.

Feijoa almond cake
80g softened butter
1/4 cup runny honey
3 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 cup feijoa puree flesh (or use frozen pulp)
1 cup plain flour
1 cup wholemeal flour
1tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk
½ cup toasted slivered or flaked almonds + 1/2 cup brown sugar mixed together - for cake topping (I often double the almonds/ sugar here for a thicker topping, but they do fall off a bit)
22 cm round cake tin - lined with baking paper

Method

Preheat oven to 180c
Cream butter and honey until pale, then add eggs one at a time.
Add vanilla essence.
Sieve flour and wholemeal flour along with salt, baking powder and soda - add the wholemeal flour's bran back.
Fold in fruit pulp followed by flour.
Fold in milk.
Spoon cake mix into tin and bake 15 minutes.
Remove from oven and sprinkle sugar and almond mix over cake and bake a further 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted into middle of cake comes out clean.
Serve with thick Greek yoghurt mixed through with freshly pulped feijoas. (this is delicious)

Happy baking!