Passion Fruit Curd & Other Fruit Curds
Passion Fruit Curd is just one variation of this adaptable recipe. Fruit curds can be made with citrus fruit, mango, passion fruit, pineapple, and others. Curds are easy to make and so versatile in the kitchen.
My custom cake business, Cake Art Studio, had a fairly large menu of cake flavors. One of the most popular was the Luscious Lemon Cake and that cake is now one of the most popular recipes on Baking Sense.
The base for that wonderful cake is a really great lemon curd recipe. If you’ve got extra egg yolks, you can make this Yolks Only Lemon Curd.
Citrus juices make wonderful curd and lemon curd is a pastry kitchen staple, but passion fruit curd is one of my favorites. I just adore the floral tropical flavor.
Passion Fruit Curd is the perfect filling for Coconut Cake and Coconut Macaroons.
It’s a bit of work to get the juice from fresh passion fruit, and passion fruit can be a little expensive. But if you’re looking to make a tart or cake with an unusual flavor, I think it’s well worth the effort.
Scroll through the step by step photos to see how to make Passion Fruit Curd (and other fruit curds):
Tips for making Passion Fruit Curd and other types of Fruit Curd:
- Always combine the sugar with the eggs before adding the fruit juice. If you add the juice to eggs without the sugar, the acidic juice will “cook” the eggs.
- The gelatin is optional. Instructions for blooming gelatin can be found here.
- If you’re using the curd for a spread or sauce you don’t need the gelatin.
- Use the gelatin when you don’t want the curd to be oozy, like in a cake or tart that will be sliced.
- It’s not necessary to cook the curd on a double boiler.
- You can cook the curd directly on the stove as long as you keep the heat on medium-low and stir constantly to avoid burning.
- When the curd is ready it should coat the spatula or spoon.
- The curd will keep for a couple of weeks in the refrigerator and can be frozen for several months.
The recipe can be adapted to make other fruit curds. See the notes section of the recipe card for an all purpose fruit curd recipe.
For inspiration, here are some of my favorite recipes that use all sorts of fruit curds: Lime Layered Cheesecake, Lemon Filled Shortbread, Pink Grapefruit Meringue Tart, Pina Colada Pie.
Finally, Passion Fruit Curd, and all other fruit curds, make a great topping for Vanilla Ice Cream.
If you love this recipe as much as I do, I’d really appreciate a 5-star review.
Fruit Curd Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 teaspoons gelatin powder (optional)
- 4 oz passion fruit juice (or other fruit juice) (1/2 cup, see notes)
- 10 oz granulated sugar (1 1/4 cups)
- 3 large eggs
- juice from 1/2 lime
- ⅛ teaspoon table salt
- 3 oz unsalted butter (cut into 1″ chunks)
Instructions
- If you are using the gelatin, bloom 1 1/2 teaspoons gelatin powder in 2 tablespoons cold water in a medium size bowl. Set aside.
- Slice the passion fruits in half. Scoop the pulp out of the shell and put into a blender or food processor. Process the pulp to separate the pulp and seeds. Strain the pulp in a fine mesh strainer. If a lot of pulp is still stuck to the seeds, process them again with a little bit of water. Strain again. You should have about a 1/2 cup of juice. Add water if needed to get to a 1/2 cup.
- Thoroughly whisk together10 oz granulated sugar and 3 large eggs in a medium saucepan. Add the passion fruit juice, juice from 1/2 lime and ⅛ teaspoon table salt.
- Place 3 oz unsalted butter on top of the bloomed gelatin. Put a fine mesh sieve over the bowl and keep it near the stove.
- Heat the egg/juice mixture over medium low heat, stirring constantly. You must be sure to keep stirring across the entire bottom and corners of the pot so the custard does not have a chance to stick. The mixture will start out opaque with a fine white foam over the surface. As it heats up the curd will thicken, become more translucent and the foam will disappear.
- Cook until the curd will coat the back of a wooden spoon and is just beginning to boil. Don't allow it to come to a full boil, just 1 or 2 bubbles and you're ready.
- Immediately remove from the heat and pour through the sieve over the butter and (optional) gelatin.
- Stir until the butter and gelatin are melted and thoroughly incorporated. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and cool a bit before putting in the refrigerator.
- Refrigerate until completely cooled. If using gelatin, allow it to sit 8 hours or overnight to gel.
Fruit Curd Variations:
- 1/2 cup juice from mango, guava, pineapple, etc.
- Adjust sugar to taste for the type of juice used. You can always use the juice from 1/2 a lime or lemon to spark the flavor. I like to use lime with mango and lemon with guava.
Would you like to save this recipe?
We’ll email this post to you, so you can come back to it later!
As an Amazon Associate and member of other affiliate programs, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Thank you so much for posting this. I’m making a gingerbread layer cake filled with orange curd and I was having difficulty getting it to set enough to work. The gelatin was perfect. It gave me the exact consistency I needed without dulling the flavor or making it rubbery. Woohoo!
Yipee! So glad to hear that. Curd is one of my absolute favorite things in the world.
Hi Eileen, thanks for the fab curd recipe, my only question I have is can I reheat the curd to add geletin to make it a bit firmer as it’s just a tad to runner for my tarts?
Hi Melissa. Yes, you can reheat the curd. What I would do is bloom the amount of gelatin you want to add. Microwave the curd until it’s runny and warm and then stir in the bloomed gelatin so it melts.
Can you make this as a raspberry curd for a cake filling? If so how?
Hi Evelyn. You can make a raspberry curd using a 1/2 cup of strained raspberry puree. I would reduce to the sugar to 10 oz (1 1/4 cups) and add the juice of 1 lemon. If you want to use it as a cake filling definitely use the optional gelatin in the recipe. Also, pipe a “dam” of buttercream around the edge so the curd doesn’t leak out.
Thanks for the advice! I tried making this last night, but this morning it was the consistency of jello, so I think something went wrong. Any suggestions on how to fix this problem? Or any ideas of what I did wrong?
I assume you refrigerated the curd? The gelatin will make it firmer, which is good. A firmer curd will stay in the cake when it’s cut. You can use a spatula to soften the curd to a spreadable consistency. Also, as it warms up it will soften. If you watch the videos in my Luscious Lemon Cake and Layered Cheesecake posts you can see the texture of the curd with gelatin. For both those recipes I let the curd soften at room temp for a little while before assembling the cake. You can also see when I slice the cakes how the curd holds it’s shape.
Just tried this recipe. It is now my hands down favorite curd recipe! Super easy and came out perfect. I used it for individual tarts but I still used the gelatin cause I didn’t want the filling running when bit or cut into. Perfect!
Thanks you for sharing
That’s great. Which flavor did you make?
Hi, I’d like to fill little tart shells with mango curd, and to top them with meringue. Will I need to use the gelatin? Please advise. Thank you 🙂
Hi Faten. If you’re putting the curd into individual tarts shells you don’t need the gelatin. I use the gelatin when I want the curd to hold it’s shape, e.g., when I use it to fill a cake layer or a large tart that will be served in slices. Mango Meringue tartlettes sound amazing! I’d love to see a photo after you make them. You can post a photo on my Facebook page or tag me on Instagram.
I’m thinking of trying this recipe because I need a firm curd for macarons, so I will be using the gelatin. If I want to pipe it onto my macs, would you recommend I pipe them before or after setting? Also have you tried this with other fruits like any kind of berry or mango?
Hi Carla, This curd works really well as a macaron filling. I’ve used the lemon curd to fill yellow macarons with great success. You will have to wait until the curd sets to pipe since it’s pretty runny when it’s just made. I’ve tried making curd with some other juices. Mango might be good. In general, I like curd made from very tart fruit juice like citrus or passionfruit. If you use a different juice you’ll just have to experiment with the amount of sugar depending on how sweet the juice is. Also, when using something like Mango a little bit of lime or lemon juice added will often brighten the flavor a bit. Let me know how it turns out if you experiment.
Thank you so much for the pointers! I’m going to be experimenting tomorrow with mangoes and apricots! I’ll definitely let you know how it turns out!