I’ve sourced it from a fabulous Kiwi foodie blog called Two Spoons but the story about where it originally comes from gets somewhat convoluted. Personally, I think that’s a highly successful recipe, one that is passed fondly from feijoa lover to feijoa lover.

Two Spoons has some superb recipes and a long list of New Zealand foodie blogs that is begging to be explored. Be sure to check it out.

And on a technical note, from now on you can click on the photos and link directly to their source.

FEIJOA & COCONUT CAKE 

Makes 1 round 8″ cake

Photo: Two Spoons

Ingredients

• 75g softened butter
• ¾ cup caster sugar
• 2 eggs, separated
• 1 cup dessicated coconut
• 1 cup plain flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• pinch salt
• ¾ cup milk (I used 3/4 water and 1/4 cream)
• ¾ cup sour cream
• ¾ cup (about 170g) feijoa flesh, scooped out and roughly chopped in the measuring cup so you don’t lose too much liquid

Method

• Preheat oven to 150°C (300°F), arranging a rack in the centre. Heavily grease your springform cake tin, then sprinkle with coconut and flour to prevent sticking.
• Beat butter and sugar until pale, then beat in yolks one at a time, for a minute after each addition. The mixture should not keep trying to separate before the next step. Add the coconut, and sift over the flour, baking powder and salt. Fold through and when it’s about half done fold the milk and sour cream through as well. Set aside.
• In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks. Fold through the yolky batter until mostly incorporated (a whisper of egg white is ok), then fold through the feijoa.
• Pop in the oven and let bake 50 minutes to an hour, until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out moist but clean. Cool until warm to the touch, then turn out.

Coconut drizzle

• 200ml coconut cream (shake the can first!)
• 1 tablespoon caster sugar

On medium low heat, bring the mixture to a bare simmer, until the sugar dissolves, and stir with a whisk constantly to break up any lumps in the cream. Drizzle over cake while warm if possible, and store covered in the fridge for later use.

She really makes it all look so easy. I love the labelling of the photos which offer a big reminder that it’s a four month process and a lot of patience is obviously required as the wine settles and clears.

Photos: voyages of the creative variety

I’ve been assured that a taste test is coming soon… wish I was popping around to lend my taste buds to the challenge but I’ll just have to settle for reading about how it all turned out. And I really want to see the labels Tori is going to make for the bottled wine – you can see more of her whimsical and romantic graphic design work if you explore her lovely blog.

I confess that I’ve never made wine of any kind, but I do like that Jeffries describes this as “not that difficult” and that it only costs “a few dollars for some ingredients from your local brew shop.”

FEIJOA WINE

Ingredients

• Enough feijoas to yield 1 ½ kilos of feijoa flesh
• 1 kilo of sugar
• 4 litres of water
• 1 Campden tablet
• ¼ teaspoon of tannin
• ¼ teaspoon of malic acid
• ½ teaspoon of tartaric acid
• 1 ½  teaspoon pectic enzyme
• 1 package of wine yeast
• 1 teaspoon of yeast nutrient

Method

1. Freeze the feijoas, thaw them and then scoop out the flesh. This freeze/thaw process helps weaken the cell walls and allows the fruit to release more flavour during the fermentation process.
2. Place the feijoa flesh in a large plastic bin or bucket.
3. Use a potato masher to mash up the fruit – this will further break down the fruit and free its juice.
4. Add your water and sugar and stir until the sugar is dissolved.
5. Add the tannin, malic acid, tartaric acid and pectic enzyme.
6. Crush the Campden tablet and add this to the mixture. Campden tablets contain sodium metabisulphite and are used to kill bacteria and inhibit the growth of wild yeast.
7. Cover your bucket with a cloth and leave it to sit for three days. Stir it morning and evening each day.
8. Strain the mixture through cheesecloth into a clean bucket.
9. Add the yeast nutrient and the wine yeast. It’s best to “start” the yeast first. Do this by mixing it with one tablespoon of sugar and 60 ml luke warm water and leaving it to stand for 15 minutes.
10. Cover the bucket with a cloth and leave it to stand for 6 days – this is where your primary fermentation will take place.
11. Siphon the wine off the sediment that will have collected at the bottom of the bucket and transfer the wine to a fermenting bin with an airlock – your wine is now entering its secondary fermentation phase.
12. Place the fermentation bin in a cool dark place and leave for 30 days.
13. After 30 days, siphon the wine from the fermentation bin, discard the collected sediment and then return the wine and ferment for a further 90 days.

When fermentation is complete, bottle the wine and age in a cool dark place for at least 6 months before drinking.

Aren't they too cute?

So, I still have a lot to learn about growing feijoas here in Australia. This is the single baby fruit that is growing on a tree which was covered in blossoms and lovingly hand pollinated with flowers from three other trees. Just so you know I’m trying to be thorough here.

As one of the local gardening experts laughed at me for expecting fruit from a three year old tree, I realised that I need a lot more patience. And a little more time. That just means the wonderful adventurous ideas I have for recipes will have to wait another year or two and I’ll just get back to focusing on all the really wonderful stuff that everyone with buckets of the fruit is creating instead.

And of course, Happy New Year feijoa lovers. As I read just recently, that means less than 90 days until the first of the early fruiting feijoas! Can’t wait to taste that wonderful fruit again.

To those of you who know a little of my situation, I can say that early signs are good that everything has been successful. However, I am really planning to give myself a rest until the new year – and as funny as it sounds, sitting at a computer is a terrible terrible thing for a lower back in distress. I may of course sneak in a few of the great posts that are waiting to go up but I hope you’ll allow a little more recuperation. I know those feijoas are ripening at the moment and I hope to be back with a whole lot more inspiration before the season is on us.

But I’ve been thinking about how great a year it has been in many other ways and how this little site is finally nearing the vision that I had quite a while ago. So it’s time to give a little thanks.

• Thanks to everyone who passes through. I get a little stat counter that tells me you’ve been here… I have no idea who you are or if you thought the site sucked or rocked, but I can see your footprints.
• Thanks to my followers and subscribers and anyone with feijoafeijoa in their RSS. You make my day. Really. (And I feel guilty that you’re not getting more).
• Special thanks to those creative feijoa lovers who said ‘yes’ to my request to use their brilliance on these pages. You’re all awesome and I have loved discovering each of the blogs and businesses and ideas that are out there. Special thanks also to those people who I didn’t ask in advance and who followed me back here and gave me a thumbs up anyway.
• I don’t think I can ever say thanks enough to the effervescent Sally of Hinterland Feijoas. She has cheered me on, shouted me out on her Facebook page and kept me going when I really wasn’t sure this was a good idea. Well, it’s great idea, but anyone with a proper blog probably has also had those moments of self-doubt about how much effort is required and whether you’re creating something new and useful, or extraneous and destined for derision and contempt.

Hopefully this won’t be the last post for the year but if it is, then I wish everyone the very best for their holidays, Christmas, Hanukkah and the transition into 2012.

feijoa flavoured hugs
Juliana

Feijoa, women’s t-shirt in 14 colours, by Sweet As Tees in the UK, £20.69.

Available from Sweet As Tees

I love feijoas t-shirts from Zazzle AU$30.80:

Available from Zazzle

I have a feijoa attitude long sleeved t-shirt from Cafe Press, AU$29.00.

Available from Cafe Press

FEIJOA PASTE

Makes 800g

Ingredients

• 10 ripe medium sized feijoas (about 1kg)
• 3 cooking apples
• 600mls water
• 600g sugar

Method

1. Use a potato peeler to remove skin from feijoas. Roughly chop fruit and weigh: you need 300g of sugar per 500g of fruit.
2. Put feijoa peel and cores and roughly chopped apples into a pan; barely cover with water. Cook until soft and mushy, about 10 minutes.
3. Strain through a fine sieve, pressing firmly to get all the liquid from the apple. In a large heavy bottomed pot cook chopped feijoas in this liquid until soft. Push through a sieve or mash.
4. Add sugar to the feijoa pulp; stir until dissolved.
5. Cook slowly on the lowest heat, stirring every 2-3 minutes until thick. This will take about 3hrs – when it’s ready the spoon should start to meet resistance and the mixture will start to come away from the sides.
6. Pour while hot into straight sided sterilised jars and seal with lids.

*As an alternative, line a straight-sided flat dish with baking paper. Pour in mixture and smooth over with a knife. Give the dish a couple of taps on the bench to settle the paste. Leave to set for 2-3 days in a warm dry place, then cut into cubes when cold and firm. Dust cubes with icing sugar and pack in a tin or jar, or place in a box lined with waxed paper, with the added sifted icing sugar.

It’s in full bloom, although I checked last year and there was sadly no fruit.

In another pleasant surprise, I went to an open home the other day, a pre-auction inspection… it was a beautiful old home set in an overgrown garden. While I was dreaming about the writing room at the back of the house and climbing the stairs to the attic-style upper bedroom – the one with the sea glimpses – hubby walked back in and said “You’ll never guess what I’ve found?” Well, to cut the story short,  in the back yard was a terrific big old feijoa tree, all glorious and in full bloom. I was rapturous for a week, thinking perfect house perfect house, but in truth it wasn’t. At least I know where two fantastic trees are growing, not too far from here.

The recipe comes from Mushroom Lane, a quirky ‘fabric, fibre, food & flower’ blog written by Flower, a mother of five who finds time to showcase ‘vintage inspired goodness’ and other wonderful things. She calls it a proper mental feijoa cake which I think I can translate from Kiwi into really awesome.

Photo: Mushroom Lane

FEIJOA & ORANGE CAKE

Ingredients

• ½ cup sugar
• 100gms butter
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon of golden syrup
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 ¾ cup flour
• 1 cup feijoa pulp (or try warm stewed feijoas)

Method

1. Beat butter and sugar, add egg and golden syrup. Mix boiling water and baking soda and add to the mixture with the flour and baking powder and feijoas.
2. Pour into a greased tin and bake at 160°C for 45 min.
3. Remove from the oven and top with a mixture of 4 tablespoons of raw or demerara sugar and the juice of 1 orange.
4. Return to the oven for another 15 minutes.
5. Serve warm with cream or cold as you would a cake.

If you’re not already a fan of Frugal Kiwi, then I recommend this blog as an inspiration for living simply (and saving your pennies) as well as providing a lovely lens on living in New Zealand. The blog’s creator Melanie is simply fearless in the kitchen when it comes to making things from scratch.

Before you start, these leather roll-ups need a lot of feijoas – about 8-10kg, if you follow the recipe exactly. That’s perfect when your tree drops a few hundred kilos on the back lawn and you are scratching around for ideas on what to do with them. Can’t wait to make them, when my trees oblige.

And while you’re there, check out Frugal Kiwi’s amusing guide on how to eat a feijoa. I wish I’d written it myself.

FEIJOA FRUIT LEATHER ROLL-UPS

You will need

• feijoas
• saucepan
• blender or stick blender
• slow cooker
• cookie sheet/s with lip
• baking/parchment paper
• oven

How to

1. First, gather your feijoas. You’ll need a lot. [A small slow cooker holds roughly 8-10 kg of fruit as weighed before processing.] Slice your feijoas in half crosswise and scoop out the flesh with a spoon and empty them into a heavy saucepan. When you’ve sliced and scooped them all, place your saucepan on medium heat and bring the feijoas to a simmer. You are wanting to cook them enough so when you blend them up in the next step you don’t stress your blender.
2. Blend the feijoas in the blender in appropriate sized batches or in the pot with a stick blender until the fruit is puréed.
3. Pour the purée into the slow cooker and cook, with the lid off on High until the purée has reduced by 75%, expect this to take 6 or more hours. Stir every 15-20 minutes or when you can remember. If you forget, a skin will form on top and a thickening may form on the bottom of the cooker. Next time you remember, stir extra thoroughly. Fruit leather making is a good task for a rainy autumn day when you’ll be home, puttering around the house.
4. When purée has reduced by 75%, pour into lipped cookie sheets lined with baking/parchment paper in a thin, but fully covered layer for each sheet. Bake at 70°C (140°F), on fan bake (convection) if you have it, until the leather has a firm surface. Expect the cooking time to be multiple hours, but it will depend on the thickness of your layers. Make as many cookie sheets of leather as you can in the oven at the same time, as you will use the same amount of energy whether you make one or three.
5. Store in an air tight container in the fridge or freezer, if they last that long.