Chocolate? Yes! Passion fruit? Yes! Chocolate and passion fruit cake?! Hell yes!!


I’m sure most of you have heard of Lily O’Briens before, if not you’ve definitely been missing out! When they reached out to us asking if we wanted to create a recipe inspired by their dessert collection we knew that the hardest part would be choosing what to make! Whilst merrily chomping our way through a hefty amount of chocolate we decided that the Passion Fruit Posset was a strong favourite for both of us. What better way to celebrate this gorgeous little thing than by recreating it in cake form?!


“White chocolate truffle infused with passion fruit, wrapped in milk chocolate and topped with more pieces pf passion fruit” have you ever heard a better chocolate description?! To make sure our cake embodied this fully we’ve layered a chocolate sponge with white chocolate ganache and passion fruit curd, then covered it with a whipped chocolate ganache and topped with more white chocolate and passion fruit curd!


First stop is making a passionfruit curd so that we can pack in the flavour of the fruit! If making a curd isn’t something you have the time for then we suggest buying some passionfruit coulis, it’s available in most supermarkets, and mixing it with a little lemon curd to thicken it slightly.


Right so we have our curd, now for the cake. We really wanted the sponge to be as moist as possible so we have used a recipe that calls for some mil and yoghurt, it’s a fairly wet cake mixture which we then bake low and slow to get a lovely even and level bake. Once fully cooled it’s time to assemble. We piped a ring of the whipped ganache around the edge of the sponge when filling the layers so that it would hold the white chocolate ganache and curd in. Ideally, you want to allow the cake to fully firm up before covering and topping it. You can top and decorate the cake however you want but to fully ressemble the chocolate we decided to carver out a small indent on top of the cake to fill with the white chocolate and then poured over the leftover curd, allowing it to dribble over the sides (for that rustic, oh i just threw this together kind of look).


Chocolate & Passionfruit Cake

Serves 6
Chocolate cake, filled with passionfruit curd and white chocolate ganache, covered in dark chocolate ganache


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Passionfruit curd
  1. 3 lemons, zest & juice
  2. 3 eggs
  3. 100g butter
  4. 75g caster sugar
  5. Pulp of 2 passion fruits
Chocolate sponge
  1. 40g cocoa powder
  2. 175g plain flour
  3. ½ tsp salt
  4. ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
  5. 225g caster sugar
  6. 2 eggs
  7. 175g unsalted butter, softened
  8. 180ml milk
  9. 1tsp vanilla essence
  10. 2 tbsp yogurt
White chocolate ganache
  1. 200g white chocolate
  2. 130ml double cream
Dark chocolate ganache
  1. 150g dark chocolate
  2. 50g milk chocolate
  3. 175ml double cream
Passionfruit curd
  1. Sieve the passionfruit pulp to remove the seeds and keep 1 tablespoon of them for later.
  2. Combine the pulp, lemon juice & zest, eggs and sugar in a bowl. Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the fruit and egg mix, stirring continuously till it starts to thicken.
  3. Bring to a boil, whisking as you go for about 1 minute.
  4. Remove from the heat for a few minutes to cool slightly, add the tablespoon of seeds.
Chocolate Sponge
  1. In a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, add in the flour, sugar, cocoa, salt and bicarbonate of soda and mix for a couple seconds to incorporate everything.
  2. Add in the butter and continue mixing until you have a sand like texture with no big lumps of butter.
  3. In a jug add the eggs, milk, vanilla and yogurt, whisk together until combined, then pour the mixture in a slow, steady stream into the bowl whilst mixing on a slow-medium speed.
  4. Mix for 1-2 minutes until you have everything is fully incorporated and you have a smooth mixture.
  5. Pour the mixture into a greased and lined deep 6″ cake tin, or 2 shallow 6″ sandwich tins.
  6. Bake at 150C for 45-55 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.
  7. Leave to cool completely before decorating, keeping it in the fridge overnight makes it easiest to decorate, however we did ours as soon as it cooled.
Ganache
  1. Whilst the cake is cooling, make your two ganaches.
  2. For both ganaches, follow the same methods;
  3. Heat the cream in a saucepan or in a jug in the microwave till almost boiling hot, pour over the chocolate and leave for 2 minutes, before stirring till smooth.
  4. Transfer to fridge to set.
Assembly
  1. Slice the cooled cake into 3 layers and place on a plate or cake board.
  2. Whip the dark chocolate ganache using an electric whisk or a stand mixture fitted with the whisk attachment. The ganache will double in size and turn pale and fluffy.
  3. Pipe a ring or ganache around the edge of two of the layers of cake and fill the inside with a layer of white chocolate ganache and passionfruit curd (be careful not to fill too much, you don’t want it spilling out the sides), and stack on top of each other, leaving the top layer smooth and flat – we use the bottom layer for the top tipped upside down to ensure it is smooth and level.
  4. Use some of the dark chocolate ganache to crumb coat the outside of the cake, set in the fridge for 20mins.
  5. Next apply a thick layer of the rest of the ganache, using a palette knife to smooth the top and sides of the cake, try and get it as neat as possible but it doesn’t matter if it’s a little rustic.
  6. Using a small palette knife, run it around the top surface of the cake to leave a little edge around the top of the cake to create a little pool in the top of your cake.
  7. Pour a little white chocolate ganache in the pool and transfer to the fridge for an hour to set the ganache.
  8. To finish, top with some curd and fresh passionfruit.
Baking a Mess /

 

This post was created in collaboration with Lily O’Briens