Pattypan's Pantry Projects Passionfruit Gin and Passionfruit Juice

Many years ago I made this on and off for a couple of years and I put up this original post in February 2012 Passionfruit Gin Recipe.  However as time goes on tastes change, you try new things and as I have a memory like a sieve at times I tend to forget things and recipes that work.  One thing that I do do though with most recipes is I adjust them as I go along with a bit of this and a bit of that but I cannot necessarily tell you how much of this or that I have used.  It was the way I was taught to cook and it also depends on your personal palate.  When it comes to sweetness of liqueur type drinks I tend to only put in a little sugar make sure it is dissolved and if it is still not sweet enough add a little more until I get it how I want it.  You can put too much sugar in and end up spoiling the liqueur, and once it is in it is sometimes nigh on impossible to get it out.  So always err on the side of caution when it comes to sugar.  Best a little at a time.  It is more messing around this way, however this is the way I prefer to do things.

In any event I scored a massive deal at the Veg shop this week in that they had quite a few bowls of passionfruit on sale and reduced.  I managed on average to get about 10 to 12 passionfruit for £1 and I bought four bowls.  I think the shop when they do reductions tend to go by weight per bowl rather than quantity.  If you go to the supermarket you will often pay more than 50p each which makes passionfruit one of the more expensive fruits to buy.  I only make the Gin or Vodka when they are on a really good offer.  I do love them though.  When I travelled to Australia in my youth, it was a revelation on the food front, I grew to love passionfruit, pumpkin, sweet potatoe, and lots of other foods that I had not come across. However what struck me most then was that the food was a lot fresher than it was in the UK.  Thankfully things have moved on a bit since then.

The original recipe tends to use a sugar syrup, I tend to add my sugar in granular (white granulated or caster sugar) form and then dissolve it in the bottle with shaking it every day.  I will leave that to your personal choice.

Passionfruit go bubbly or wrinkly on the skin when they are ripe.  There does not look as though there is much juice or fruit in but there is.  It is highly aromatic.  I used 40 passionfruit with one litre of Gin. You may have to add a few more or a few less depends on your own palate again but it does make a very agreeable drink.

Designer Gins and Vodkas are all the rage and very in vogue at the moment, but in reality these little creations have been one of the home preserver's little secrets like Rhubarb Gin.  They need minimal input and just a modicum of time and patience.

I have some more Gin to pop into the jar as I had a one litre bottle of Gin and I started off both Passionfruit Gin and Damson Gin.  I need to add that today.

I then leave the Gin for about a month to six weeks.  I strain this through a normal kitchen sieve (white nylon not metal)  and get all the seeds out.  I then pass through some muslin.  If it needs further sieving to finish it off pass it through a coffee paper filter which will help get rid of any latent sediment.  Then decant into fresh sterilised bottles.  Please note that if you manage to keep any home made liqueur type drinks for any period of time that sometimes a fine sediment does build up - not always, but sometimes.  This is quite natural and if you do not like the look of it strain it off and re-bottle again.  It does not harm the drink.

I am looking forward to opening my Passionfruit Gin for Christmas.  I am not a big drinker, I have favourite drinks but I am partial to a small glass of a liqueur type drink every so often.  Often more than not I tend to drink flavoured Gins with lemonade and ice and not very often neat.

I think that this one will go down very nicely on Christmas morning either with some fizzy white wine or Champagne.

I do however freeze Passionfruit juice in ice cube trays, either with the seeds or without and then just add to some ice cream as a sauce or yet again use in drinks.  Often it is the simplest things that bring the most pleasure.  I have some juice to do later on this afternoon as I managed to get a few more Passionfruit yesterday.

Cheers.

Pattypan

x