Once again it is that time of the year when our yellow fruiting form of the granadilla or Passion Fruit, Passiflora edulis, with the name of Flavicarpa but known to us in South Africa as Guavadilla, starts producing to the joy of monkeys and humans alike. I have twice posted on the subject a year ago; no harm in repeating the message, though.
We have come to an arrangement with the monkeys. They eat most of the ones up on the vine where we often can’t reach them anyway, and we eat the ones they knock to the ground or those that fall by themselves. The fruit needs to fall to indicate that they are nearly ripe, anyway. One can’t rely on the condition of skin or degree of yellowness. Often ones perfectly ready for consumption still show a lot of green, while some glowing yellow ones are already spoiled. On the other hand, some wrinkly ones are still perfectly good.
The second gathering of 2018 has produced this batch, and having bought sweetened condensed milk in anticipation I proceeded to prepare them for our Sunday dessert.
That makes me break off for a diversion. koolkosherkitchen has introduced to bloggers a Miami Beach café/restaurant called Otentic which has a lovely slogan: ‘Stressed is desserts spelt backwards’. I would venture an improvement:
‘Stressed? For a cure, spell it backwards!’
Anyway, the procedure for this, my simplest and most heavenly dessert ever, is to start with simple bisection.
Next, a suitably pointy dessert spoon is used to remove the flesh and pips without, if possible, disturbing the pithy tendrils. When the process in done carefully, not a fragment of the edible part remains, but the tendrils are intact inside the skin.
Finally, all skins and innards will have been separated, and one is careful to bin the former and retain the latter and not the other way around.
Half the batch shown here, with a tin of condensed milk, produced a generous, decadent and delicious dessert for five, and there was enough of the mixture left to put in the fridge and keep for another serving of the same size. It keeps for weeks, if one can resist eating it for that long.
(P.S. In fact, we divided what was left into two and actually had enough for a third serving from those seventeen assorted guavadillas.)
Colonialist's Blog 
I’ve never seen them here in NZ. The round purple ones are plentiful; I like their pulp mixed with cream and sugar. I think they’d be naturally too sweet for sweetened condensed milk.
Another variety that grew well (too well) was one with yellow elongated fruit – teardrop shape, but known as banana passionfruit. They’re now prohibited, because their seeds can be spread by birds, rats and possums, and they grow in native bush and strangle it. I had one in my yard and the Regional Council sent me a letter telling me to pull it out!
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Typical Regional Council logic. Pull out a plant that looks good and produces something yummy because it interferes with various things that look bad and produce nothing edible.
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Plus, just over my fence is a wilderness of long grass on land that belongs to them. In summer this grass gets very dry and is a fire risk to all the houses (mostly old and all wooden) whose yards border on it. Do they ever do anything about it, like getting it cut? Nuh. Like they don’t do anything about the ivy that chokes more native tress round here than a passion fruit vine ever could.
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Again, ever so typical!
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My wifes very fond of passionfruit not so sure about the condensed milk though, might try this out on her. Thanks Lesley
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Is that the purple or the yellow kind she likes? These ‘guavadillas’, being less sweet in themselves, lend better to the condensed milk idea.
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I have no idea I can’t stand the things 🙂
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Hate that Fruit with a Passion, in fact?
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Sounds good but is there not some substitute for that, in my opinion, absolutely vile substance called “sweetened condensed milk”? Always disliked that stuff ever since I was 9 years old many moons ago when I was first introduced to it, and avoid any recipe that contains it as one of the ingredients.
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Maybe you could try cream and add sugar to sweeten the mix to your liking?
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How fabulous to have abundant access to this fruit, even if you have to wrestle the monkeys! 🙂 It’s considered an “exotic” fruit in our markets and extremely pricey. Maybe I’ll find someone with a vine, but I’m not too confident. But YUM!
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Certainly a useful addition to a property — it is a wonder estate agents don’t advertise such ‘improvements’!
If you have access to a plant or a cutting, and a temperate climate, grow your own! They don’t take long to establish. You could expect a crop in 6 – 9 months after planting.
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I think our climate might work well! I’m going to go on a search for a cutting. Thank you! 🙂
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Mental note on a piece of paper.
Plant some!
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Good idea! If they like where they are at, your efforts will swiftly be rewarded!
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What synchronicity! I had never heard of, nor seen a guavadilla, until yesterday, when I was admiring my elderly neighbours vine. It is a mass of blossoms and small green fruits. “You are certainly going to have a bumper crop of granadillas this year” I remarked, to which he replied “NO, they’re guavadillas!” And then described them to me, promising me some samples when they are ripe. I can’t wait!
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(sonorously) And it was ordained that in this year she was to sample all the delights of the fabulous flavicarpa …
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What a delightful thought: dessert.I never knew that stressed was dessert spelled backwards; good information for future years. May I ask what the “pithy tendrils” are? Thanks.
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Really useful useless information, isn’t it?
The tendrils are those wiggly bits you can see inside the (otherwise) empty skins.
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