Passionate for Passion Fruit & Lemon

For some reason, I have been buying lemons like crazy these last weeks! I have so many lemons in my kitchen that you would think there was a lemon tree in my apartment. Thankfully that isn't the case, because I'm pretty sure my cat would eat that tree and get a stomach ache from the lemons...

Anyway, I promised the man of the house that I would make him a lemon loaf cake. Though, like many of my food promises... I sort of changed my mind. If you ever were to speak to him about this he would go off on how I did this before with the crème caramel a few years ago. Oops. Alas, I did change my mind about the loaf, but instead said I'd make lemon cookies. Thankfully, he was all in on the idea of cookies.

I made these delicious lemon cookies that unfortunately called for lemon extract in them as well. I don't know about you, but I really do not like the idea of lemon/lime extract or essence, Lately, I've noticed that bottled lime or lemon juice even comes with essence in it. YUCK! It adds a sort of artificial taste to the flavour. NOTHING should be artificial when it comes to some of the best citrus flavours out there! So, instead of following that recipe and using the lemon extract, I just added some extra lemon juice and rind to the mixture. I got the recipe for the cookies from Live Well, Bake Often, you can find her recipe here. The cookies were delicious, but they were missing something...

On one of my recent trips to the Real Canadian Superstore, I saw passion fruit that I just had to have. This came in handy for when I needed that missing ingredient for our cookies.

I decided to make some incredible thumb print lemon cookies with passion fruit curd! Are you drooling as much as I am?

So, before I tell you how I made the passion fruit curd, I just want to say that I was way too lazy to use a double boiler method and was only making a tiny batch of curd. Enough for 8 cookies. I used the following to make my curd:

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Ingredients:

• 1 passion fruit

• 3 teaspoons of white sugar

• 1 teaspoon of butter

• 2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

• 1/2 egg yolk

Instructions:

1. In a small microwave safe bowl, combine passion fruit pulp, white sugar, and lemon juice. Mix well and place in microwave for 20 seconds.

2. Remove from Microwave and continue to mix well.

3. Add butter and mix into slightly warm mixture and allow to melt.

4. Place bowl back into microwave for 10 seconds.

5. Add egg yolk to mixture and beat into mixture until combined.

6. Place bowl back in microwave for 10 seconds and remove to stir. Keep adding back into microwave for additional 10 seconds to stir until curd reaches consistency that you like.

7. Put aside.

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Once you are ready to use the curd, make a little dip in the centre of your cookies and cook for half the time necessary. Pull cookies out of the oven and scoop passion fruit curd into each cookie. Place your cookies back into the oven and bake for the remainder time necessary.

Remove your cookies once timer goes off and be careful not to burn yourself due to the temptation of eating them already.

They will be so delicious that you'll want to eat them in one sitting!

Enjoy!