Cardamom and Tea

This passion fruit cake layers bold flavors with a simple, vibrant swirl technique. But that swirl is not just there for show!

Here’s the thing: passion fruit is basically delicious tropical water. Add it straight to cake batter and you risk a soggy, dense, flavorless situation. But turn it into an easy-peasy passion fruit curd, and everything changes. The flavor concentrates, the texture custardizes, and suddenly you’ve got an ingredient that actually wants to be in a cake.

Fold that passion fruit curd into the batter, spoon some more across the top, and swirl it into golden ribbons. Then throw it in the oven, and wind up with a cake that’s tart, sweet, squidgy, and big on passion fruit flavor.

Jump to the recipe to get started, or read on for some tips + step-by-step photos.

Tips for passion fruit cake success

General tips for cake success

These tips will up your baking game in many, many recipes, so keep these in mind whenever you are baking:

Don’t over-mix the batter: This goes for any batter where you want a tender crumb. Once the liquid goes in, you want to mix it well, but not too well. If you overmix the batter, it will become gluey and the resulting cake will be tough and dry. Same goes for cookies, scones, pie crust, etc. We’re not making bread here!
Toothpick a cake section, not a curd section: This is a good tip for any cake with gooey mix-ins: when you’re inserting a toothpick, don’t insert it into a curd blob, or you won’t get a very accurate result. Same goes for a cake with chocolate chunks, pieces of fruit, etc.

Tips for making the best passion fruit cake ever

Use my recipe for passion fruit curd! It’s super easy, doesn’t use a double-boiler, has 0 straining, and I made a video in case you don’t have a thermometer and prefer to eyeball the texture instead. I highly recommend it for this recipe.
Don’t accidentally add all the curd at once. I mean, it’s not like I would ever do something so ridiculous… 😳 lolll. But just in case, I have listed the passion fruit curd twice, once for the batter and once for the swirls. When shopping for ingredients, make sure you buy enough for the full amount (1⅓ cups or 350 grams).
Follow the swirling instructions, and don’t over-swirl it. Over-swirling can seriously affect the texture of this cake, and not in a good way. You don’t want to accidentally stir the passion fruit topping into the cake batter. So when you swirl, go through each blob just once or twice. And if you’re unsure, err on the side of less swirling. Even if you do a good job, it will look completely over-swirled (the curd disappears into the batter almost immediately after swirling!). But don’t worry—as long as you’ve underdone the swirling, the curd and cake will differentiate as they bake.

I also wanted to give a quick shout out to Lucy Cufflin’s lemon curd cake, which majorly inspired this one with its charmingly wonky swirls of lemon curd in a sea of butter cake. This recipe marries olive oil and passion fruit instead, with its own lopsided charm. I highly recommend both!

Passion Fruit Cake

Print Recipe

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5 from 1 review

Prep Time: 10 minutes*
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 40 minutes
Yield: 8 slices

Ingredients

¾ cup [150 g] sugar
½ cup [105 g] extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for greasing the pan
3 large eggs
⅔ cup [175 g] passion fruit curd (for the batter)
1⅓ cups [175 g] all-purpose flour
1¼ tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
Another ⅔ cup [175 g] passion fruit curd (for the swirls)**

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Instructions

Preheat the oven to 375°F [190°C]. Oil a 9 in [23 cm] cake pan and line the bottom with a parchment round.
Place the sugar, olive oil, eggs, and ⅔ cup [175 g] of the passion fruit curd in a mixing bowl. Stir together until completely homogenous.
Sift the flour, salt, and baking powder into the wet ingredients. Stir just until combined (do not overmix).
Scrape the batter into the prepared cake pan, smooth it out, and then top it evenly with spoonfuls of the remaining ⅔ cup [175 g] passion fruit curd. You should end up with about 12 spoonfuls spaced across the surface. Drag the back of your spoon through the cake in figure-eights so that you catch each blob once or twice. You should end up with thin swirls across the surface (don’t overswirl, or it will affect the texture of the cake).
Bake for about 30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake (avoiding the passion fruit) comes out clean. Let it sit for about 3 minutes in the pan, then trace around the edge with a knife, invert the cake onto a parchment-covered plate, peel off the parchment from the bottom, and invert again onto a wire rack. Peel the parchment off the top and let the cake cool before slicing.

Notes

* I wrote this recipe for people who have made my passion fruit curd recipe and want to use it up, but if you haven’t made the passion fruit curd yet, add 15 mins or so to the prep time.

** I wrote it this way to make sure you don’t accidentally add it all at once while quickly glancing at the ingredients list! But for easy shopping/cooking, that’s a total of 1⅓ cups [350 g] of passion fruit curd. If you make my passion fruit curd recipe, that’s enough for this cake + extra for serving at the table (or freezing).

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This passion fruit curd recipe is the easiest because:

You don’t have to strain it.
You don’t have to use a double-boiler.
You don’t have to add ingredients in several stages.
It uses whole eggs (no separating them!).
There’s a video! So you don’t have to use a thermometer and can just eyeball it.

One of the keys to making this recipe easy is your food processor! (But don’t worry, there’s a hack if you don’t own one.)

I know: no double-boiler! Sounds risky. But I’ve made this recipe dozens of times, and it always results in a glossy, set-yet-spreadable passion fruit curd. I love it so much, I even put it in my book!

If you’re ready to start whisking, jump to the recipe + video. Otherwise, read on to see why it works.

passion fruit curd in a stainless steel pot

passion fruit curd in a jar on an aluminum baking tray of scones

Food processor = the key to easy, delicious passion fruit curd

Why is your food processor the key? Well…

1. It breaks up the fibrous pulp (so, no lumps!)

I learned this trick from Erin at Cloudy Kitchen. She explains that passion fruit pulp has a lot of fibrous stuff clinging to the seeds. But by blending it in a food processor, your curd will turn out silky smooth, never lumpy with little bits of passion fruit goo floating around.

2. The food processor doesn’t pulverize the seeds (so you won’t have to strain it!)

If you were to use a high-power blender for this, the seeds would start to break down, and you might need to strain it afterwards. A food processor, on the other hand, breaks down the membranous pulpy stuff without breaking up the seeds. They stay completely intact and add a peppery crunch. No one will mistake this curd for lemon—the seeds make it unmistakably passion fruit.

3. It emulsifies the sugar and eggs with the passion fruit (so, no double-boiler!)

In a traditional recipe for curd, you would need to add the sugar and eggs/yolks together first, then whisk them until they are completely smooth. This standard technique makes the eggs less likely to break or scramble once heated. But when you’re using the food processor, you can skip this step. Or rather, let the food processor do the work for you.

After creating such a serious emulsion, your passion fruit curd is much less likely to break. So you can get away with skipping the double boiler! Just make sure you don’t let it skip past the target temperature. If you don’t have a thermometer, keep an eye on the time and heat, and make sure you watch the video below to know what to look for.

4. You don’t have to separate the eggs!

Although… the food processor doesn’t get credit for this one. It’s just that I designed this recipe so that it uses whole eggs instead of yolks. And that’s because I can’t stand separating eggs. I mean, the actual separating is not such a hassle, but I despise having to find a use for all those whites afterwards.

frozen passion fruit chocolate bars photographed from overhead (unsliced)

If you don’t have a thermometer, no worries!

If you don’t have a thermometer, you’ll just need to pay close attention to the signs. It’s going to take a slightly different amount of time for everyone, depending on your stove, etc. But the time guidelines in the recipe will keep you on the right general track.

But more than timings, you should pay attention to what the curd looks like, because that is the best indicator of whether it is done. The video above will help the most, but here are some screen shots and descriptions of what it looks like at various stages of doneness:

passion fruit curd at room temperature—the texture of orange juice with pulp

At room temperature, passion fruit curd is the consistency of orange juice with added pulp. It’s watery, a bit dull in color, and usually has a layer of foam on the top. At this point, you can safely keep the heat at medium-low (a bit more on the medium side) while whisking constantly.

passion fruit curd at 60°C (slightly thickened, but still very runny)

At 140°F [60°C], passion fruit curd begins to give off some wisps of steam. Look carefully and you’ll notice them. It also starts to thicken slightly, and becomes a bit brighter in color. The foam is still there, but there’s less of it. At this point, begin to reduce the heat gradually while still whisking constantly.

Passion fruit curd at 75°C—fully thickened—the whisk leaves a trail in the curd for a moment

At 167°F [75°C], passion fruit curd significantly thickens and becomes even brighter. There is no longer foam on the surface, and it is a bit steamier than it was at 140°F [60°C]. Do not let it go much past this point because it will start to curdle at 180°F [82°C]. Don’t stop whisking!

Ways to use it

Scone topping: spread on your favorite scones (especially with clotted cream on the side).
Passion fruit olive oil cake (you can find my recipe here or check out Piecemeal)
Layer cake filling: Make a buttercream border, and then fill with passion fruit, so it doesn’t ooze out the sides when you add on the next layer. Curd works best for cake designs that don’t need a ton of structural integrity.
Passion fruit fool: Whip cream to medium-peaks, then swirl in some curd. For the best appearance, add a couple blobs and then give it a couple swirls.
Yogurt parfait: Top a bowl of yogurt with passion fruit curd.
Over-the-top strawberry shortcakes: Add a bit to some strawberry shortcakes for an upgrade.
You can also use this passion fruit curd in place of lemon curd in just about any recipe. It will almost always work great, but sometimes it might not substitute perfectly. But have fun experimenting! ~~Lemon~~ passion fruit bars, ~~lemon curd~~ passion fruit cookies, even a loaf cake that calls for a curd in the original recipe. The sky’s the limit!