Olive Oil Passionfruit Loaf Cake

This passionfruit loaf cake has floral olive oil and a perfect texture from greek yogurt, and is brushed with a passionfruit syrup and finished with a passionfruit icing

Hi! Happy Sunday! It’s been a bit of a quiet one around here - we got loads of snow yesterday so have just been keeping cozy.

I’ve been slowly getting back into the swing of things in the kitchen, and have been working on some fun simple recipes to share with you - starting with this Olive Oil Passionfruit Loaf Cake! I know a lot of my recipes are multi component and / or very time consuming, and although this cake does have a few steps to it, it comes together with just a few bowls and a whisk (and a scale of course), no washing your mixing bowl required!

Passionfruit is absolutely one of my favourite fruits - and it grows everywhere in NZ, so I was super bummed out when I moved to New York and realised that it’s not the right environment for it to grow here. Thankfully I can often find the frozen puree in the freezer section at the supermarket, which is the next best thing, and I splashed out and got a fresh passionfruit for the icing of this cake.

The cake itself is super simple - a basic olive oil loaf cake, fancied up a bit by the passionfruit. When it comes to baking with Olive Oil I always suggest using a great quality one, and this California Extra Virgin Olive Oil from my friends at Filippo Berio is one of my favourites. It is quite mild and fruity, with a tiny bit of a peppery finish, and I love how it compliments the passionfruit in this recipe. I worked with Filippo Berio all of last year, and I am so happy to tell you that we are working together again this year, so you can expect a blog post each month from me showing off their amazing products!

I wanted to get a triple dose of the passionfruit into the recipe, so I finished the cake off with a brush of a passionfruit syrup to help amp up the flavour and lock in some of the moisture, and then added a passionfruit icing made from puree and powdered sugar. All the components are super simple, but put together, they create a tiny bit of passionfruit magic. I hope that you will give this one a go! x

A few wee tips:

• I baked this in a Pullman Pan, which has super straight sides, but a one pound loaf pan 9” x 4 ½” x 2 ¾” would work too - just don’t go any smaller than that or you will have a bad time. I usually line my loaf pans with a parchment paper sling but this particular pullman pan is very non-stick so I just went with a good spray of baking spray!
• I always bake this on a baking sheet, just in case.
• I like adding the syrup while the cake is still a bit warm, so that it absorbs it nicely, but wait until it is properly cooled before adding the passionfruit glaze, so that it does not run off the cake. The glaze will look super rough when you first put it on, but it will settle and become smooth in a minute or two.
• I used passionfruit pulp / puree for this, which I got at my local supermarket in the freezer section. You could use regular passionfruits for this too - to get this, I like to quickly pulse the insides of the fruit in the food processor, which makes the flesh separate out from the seeds, and then strain to get the juice / pulp. Don’t buy passionfruit juice with added sugar - you want pure puree.
• I added the seeds of a passionfruit to the glaze, just for a little texture. This step is totally optional if you can’t find fresh fruit!
• I like my glaze to be quite thick - but by all means feel free to make yours a little thinner if you like. I usually start with 30g of passionfruit juice, mix it until fully incorporated, then add more just a little squeeze at a time. You need the glaze to be thicker than you think or it goes everywhere.

Thank you so much to Filippo Berio for sponsoring this post! All opinions are my own.

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