Passionfruit Curd and Cream Tartlets, Seeds and All

1. Halve the passionfruit and set a tablespoon of the raw pulp aside, seeds and all. That spoonful goes back in at the end.
2. Scoop the rest into a sieve over a bowl and press it with the back of a spoon until you have about 80ml of juice. Keep a teaspoon of the drained seeds.
3. Whisk the sugar, eggs, extra yolks, lemon juice and salt together, then whisk in the passionfruit juice.
4. Pour into a small heavy saucepan and set it over low heat. Keep the spatula moving, base and edges included, for 6 to 8 minutes, until a finger drawn across the coated blade leaves a line that stays open. It must not boil.
5. Take the pan off the heat and work in the cold butter two or three cubes at a time, waiting for each lot to vanish before the next goes in.
6. Stir in the tablespoon of raw pulp you held back. Heat takes the perfume out of passionfruit first; raw fruit at the end puts it back.
7. Scrape into a clean bowl without sieving it again. Lay cling film straight onto the surface so it cannot skin, and refrigerate for two hours, until it is firm enough to spoon without running.
8. Whip the cream with the icing sugar to soft peaks and stop there. Whipped stiff, it goes grainy on top of a wet filling.
9. Press one case before you fill anything. Straight from a sealed pack it snaps; one left open in a humid kitchen has already gone soft, and three minutes at 150°C on a dry tray brings the snap back. Cool them completely.
10. Fill within the hour of serving. Two teaspoons of curd in each case, levelled with the rim, is right.
11. Top each one with about 8g of cream, a peak piped with a 10mm plain nozzle or shaped between two teaspoons.
12. Scatter the reserved seeds over the cream, add a mint leaf if you have one, and take the tray to the table.

Curd against the pastry, cream on top

The order is not decorative. Curd is set with egg and butter, so it sits where you put it; cream loosens as it warms and slides off a rim within half an hour out of the fridge. Curd underneath is the body of the tartlet and the cream only the finish: the curd fills the shell to the rim, and cream whipped just to soft peaks is mild enough for the fruit to read straight through it.

The seeds go on last, and they are the point. Cooked in the curd they turn soft and dull. Scattered raw at the end they stay crisp, and they are what tells a passionfruit tray from a lemon one.

Make the curd ahead, not the tartlets

A week in the jar is the limit here, because there is raw fruit stirred through it. It freezes for three months; thaw it overnight and whisk it smooth. Filled tartlets will not wait: assemble inside the hour and the base is still crisp at the table. If lemons are the better buy in the week you want this, the lemon curd and raspberry tartlets use the same pack of cases and the same pan.

Questions about passionfruit curd

How many passionfruit do you need for curd?

Nine for a batch of about 450g, four times what twelve 40mm cases take. A ripe fruit carries roughly 20g of pulp and about half of that is seed, so one fruit's worth is held back raw for the end and the other eight sieve down to 80ml of juice. What is left over goes on toast.

Why is my passionfruit curd runny?

Usually because it came off the heat early. Curd thickens gently and then quite suddenly, and the test is the line a finger leaves across the spatula: if it closes over, give it another minute. A curd still loose after two hours in the fridge goes back on low heat with an extra yolk.

Can you use tinned passionfruit pulp?

Yes, with the sugar adjusted. Tinned pulp comes in sweetened syrup, so drain it, measure the 80ml from what is left and drop the caster sugar to about 100g, tasting before the butter goes in. Tinned seeds are soft rather than crisp, so the raw spoonful at the end is the part you lose.

Nine passionfruit, one pack of Confiletas Mini Sweet Round Pastry Cases at $9.95 and what is already in the fridge: a dessert you can decide on at four o'clock. The mini round is the one-bite shape, and the bigger and savoury shells are in tarts and pastry shells. The full Confiletas range and the festive entertaining shelf cover the rest of a longer night. Orders placed before 12pm on a weekday are dispatched the same day from our Corio, VIC warehouse, tracked with Australia Post.