Passion fruit Cordial

Our passion fruit vine produced rather abundantly this year and we are still picking some of the dark purple fruits to eat. During our morning wander down to the vege patch today, I was promptly directed (by the finger pointing, grunting and staunch refusal of little miss 1 to be removed from the area) to supply Noodles and Little Dude with a half a fruit each. I barely managed to tear the fruit in two before they were sucking up the sweet, orange pulp.

Pyjamas, gumboots and sticky juice dribbling down their arms - what a way to start the day!

Meanwhile, we've had some ripe passion fruits sitting in a container in the kitchen for weeks now. Half forgotten. Just waiting idly for something to be done with them. So today was the day to do that something and passion fruit cordial that something was.

PASSION FRUIT CORDIAL

• 3 and a half cups of raw sugar
• 3 cups of water*bring to the boil and then remove from the heat.

• half an ounce of Epsom salts
• 1 desert spoon of citric acid

*add to sugar water and stir to dissolve.

• 12 passion fruits

*add and stir well.

Serve diluted with water, carbonated water or champagne.

Store in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.

I'm rather pleased with the result. It tastes quite nice.

You could probably try straining the pulp to remove the seeds, but I'd only bother to do that If I had plans to make a passion fruit cheesecake at the same time. If only I'd had the ingredients for that this morning!