Honey Cake with Passionfruit-Mascarpone

When I made this cake, I was preparing recipes for a potential feature in a magazine. The brief was “4 ways with passion fruit” Fantastic I said! Let’s do it I said! Alas, the article took a ‘slightly’ different direction - simply put - I can stop purchasing passion fruit for $20 a kilo - THANK GOODNESS!

So … after enjoying my short lived delusional fame, I feel it’s important to share with you some highlights! Overwhelmed with a publishing opportunity, I immediately began shooting recipes -  and being a full time student, working part time, time poor, not to mention poor, did nothing to slow down my enthusiasm and devotion to developing winning recipes. Should I have been studying instead? Should of, would of, could of …. My yearning for fame, and passion for food took over, and I was unstoppable!  

Every week I brought in a memory card full of photos from my weekend passionfruit shoots. A designer at the magazine, Meng, patiently critiqued my photos and tutored me. The more shoots I did, and the more time Meng spent with me, the better my food photography got!

After my month long passionfruit assault, Meng took a month off - he tells me it was for his honeymoon, however the passionfruit pictures may have played some small part! The good news is - the month flew by, and upon his return, despite his need to catch up on his ‘own’ work, Meng sat patiently with me, pouring over the million more photos I’d taken, and reviewed my work.

It’s people like Meng that play such important roles in peoples lives. If you’re like me and love what you do, the Meng’s of the world are gold! I’m proud to say my work is getting better and I’m so happy with what I’ve achieved.

“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure” - Colin Powell

Ingredients

2 cups plain flour

1 tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. bicarbonate soda

½ tsp. salt

2 tsp. ground cinnamon

1 ½ cups caster sugar

3 eggs, room temperature

125g melted butter, cooled slightly

1 cup honey

Topping

300g mascarpone cheese

3 tbsp. icing sugar

1/3 cup passionfruit curd

3 passion fruit, pulp  

Method

1.    Preheat oven to 180˚C fan-force and line a 22 cm bundt tin with butter and baking paper

2.    Whisk together flour, baking powder, bicarbonate soda, salt and cinnamon in a large bowl

3.   In a medium bowl whisk the eggs and sugar until the sugar has dissolved. Whisk in the melted and cooled butter and honey until combined

4.    Make a well in the dry ingredients and stir in the wet until well combined

5.    Pour cake batter into the prepared cake tin and bake for 50 to 55 minutes or until cooked through. Although to cool for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely

6.    Whip mascarpone cheese, icing sugar and passion fruit curd until light and fluffy

7.    When cake has completely cooled, spoon passion fruit cream on top of cake. Finish my spooning fresh passion fruit pulp over the cream