Hearty, Tasty and Healthy Lilikoi Butter

If you haven’t yet heard of lilikoi butter, or even lilikoi, understand that it’s a delicious way to preserve lilikoi, a tasty tropical fruit, also known as passion fruit. Just as jams and jellies are preserved fruits, lilikoi butter is preserved lilikoi fruit. To understand this sweet-n-sour yummy treat, let’s learn the basics first.

What is Lilikoi?

Before knowing what lilikoi butter is, let’s learn about lilikoi. Lilikoi is nothing but the fruit you otherwise know as passion fruit. The plant’s flowers are known as passion flower or Passiflora edulis forma flavicarpa. It’s a vine and grows abundantly in Hawaii, but originally it belongs to Latin America. Today it’s grown in all tropical regions with various names, e.g., in Puerto Rico as Chinola, in Ecuador and Brazil as Marcuya, and in Mexico as Granadilla. The flowers are beautiful and eventually form pods containing edible seeds. These fruits can be eaten raw or can be turned into a variety of dishes such as desserts, drinks and even savory dishes.

Passion flowers are purple as well as yellow colored. A flower has five white petals and a rich red or purple base. The fruits formed from the flowers are either purple or yellow. They are entirely fleshy and inside the flesh, dark seeds are embedded. The fruit tastes tart to sweet. As such, lilikoi fruits are produced year-round, but are at their peak during the summer season when one vine can produce hundreds of fruits.

What is Lilikoi Butter?

As such, lilikoi fruit can be eaten raw. You can cut through its center and you’ll find flesh and seeds inside which you can scoop out and just eat it. If you couldn’t eat seeds, you can just spit them out.

Lilikoi butter is another fantastic way to enjoy passion fruit. You not only can eat the butter in a variety of ways such as with bagels, waffles, toast, crepes, yogurt, cocktails, pancakes etc., but also can make other delicious recipes from it, which we’re going to share with you just in a short while.

You can grow your own lilikoi in your garden or collect them from the wild and make your own lilikoi butter. It can be made by pureeing the fruit and adding egg yolks and sugar to it and cooking the mixture.

However, if you can’t make your own lilikoi butter, don’t worry. Try the 7 delicious flavors from Liko Lehua Lilikoi Fruit Butter. This golden spread is rich with ripe lilikoi fruit and can offer you the full sweet-tart enjoyment of the fruit.

Uses of Lilikoi Butter

Here we’ll enlist the ways in which you can use lilikoi butter so you can realize the power of this smooth, rich spread.

• Use lilikoi butter in recipes in place of sugar. It comes with an added aroma.
• Mix it in baked or roasted sweet potatoes.
• Use it instead of jelly on toast and English muffins.
• Add to oatmeal for an added flavor.
• Serve as a side dish with any pork dish.
• Heat and place it on top of ice creams.
• Mix it with vinegar, oil, pepper and salt to make a vinaigrette.
• Mix it with plain yogurt or cottage cheese
• Spread on a melted cheese sandwich.
• Mix with fruit and yogurt, and freeze to make yogurt-fruit popsicles.
• Add to baked beans.
• Use as a topping on cupcakes and pancakes.

And there are many more exciting ways to use it. Sky is the limit to your creativity!

Why Should You Eat Lilikoi Butter?

Lilikoi is a nutritionally rich fruit and everyone should include it in their diet. But cutting it and then scooping the pulp may not be an easy and quick job for everyone. So, how to make sure you get the nutritional and taste benefits of passion fruit? It’s by making the fruit into something like lilikoi butter. Once made or purchased, lilikoi butter comes in handy to add to any dish to make it flavorful and get the health benefits of passion fruit at the same time.

Lilikoi is packed with antioxidants, vitamins and minerals. Vitamin A and C in it are potent antioxidants themselves. They reduce the oxidative stress in the body, protect body cells, make blood vessels and muscles stronger and prevents skin damage, thus offering the skin a healthy glow. It also reduces the chances of cancer and heals body faster. As everyone knows, vitamin A is essential for the health of eyes, immunity and cell walls.

Lilikoi butter lowers cholesterol levels, heat disease and diabetes. It promotes the health of kidneys, and nerves, and regulates heartbeat.

Let’s now learn some recipes you can make with lilikoi butter. We’re sure you’ll be eager to make them.

Lilikoi Crème Brulee

Lilikoi crème brulee is not only delicious but is full of nutrients, and super easy to make if you have lilikoi butter handy.

Ingredients

• A jar of Lilikoi butter
• 45 grams powdered sugar

Method

Preheat oven at 90 degree C.

Pour lilikoi butter in small bowls or ramekins. Place these bowls or ramekins in the oven and bake for around 25 minutes until the mixture is cooked but not exactly firm, it should be slightly shaky.

Take bowls out from the oven and let them cool down. Then place them in the refrigerator.

A short while before serving, sprinkle a little powdered sugar on the surface of each crème brulee and with a torch or a grill, burn it to caramelize the sugar. Make sure the crème brulee do not burn.

Once the sugar is caramelized, serve immediately to prevent the cream from turning back to liquid.

Lilikoi Butter Fish Fillets

Again, when you have your lilikoi butter handy, making yummy fish fillets with it is super easy and quick. It brings out the flavors of fresh local fish and by adding macadamia nuts you can make it even more Hawaiian.

Ingredients

• Fish fillets (10-12 oz for serving 2; take more to serve more)
• A jar of lilikoi butter
• Macadamia nuts chopped
• Red pepper
• Pepper
• Salt

Method

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Lay the fish fillets out on a large cookie sheet covered with aluminum foil. Commonly, Ono is used for this dish. But if you have no access to Ono, you can even use a hake or cod.

Brush the fillets with salt and pepper. If you need to make them spicier, you can even sprinkle them with red pepper.

Now brush the fillets with lilikoi butter.

Sprinkle chopped macadamia nuts.

Bake in the oven for around 15 minutes or until done.

Lilikoi Butter Tartlets

You can make the lilikoi butter tartlets for a birthday party no matter how full your party menu is. They are going to excite everyone!

Ingredients

• 1 jar of lilikoi butter
• 2 sticks butter (at room temperature)
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• ½ cup powdered sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract or ¼ teaspoon vanilla powder
• ¾ teaspoon kosher salt
• Pieces of strawberry, blueberry, raspberry or other fruit for garnish
• Mint leaves for garnish

Method

Preheat the oven to 335 degrees.

Spray a mini muffin tin with vegetable spray and keep aside.

In a small bowl, mix the flour and salt together. (Vanilla powder should be mixed with these two. But vanilla extract should be added to the sugar and butter mixture described below.) Keep aside.

Take the butter in a large mixing bowl and beat till it acquires a creamy consistency. Add the powdered sugar and beat for an additional couple of minutes till it becomes fluffy and pale yellow. (You can add the vanilla extract to this mixture at this stage).

Now add the flour to the butter-sugar mixture and beat more to mix everything completely.

Spoon each muffin tin with this batter. With a dough tamper, tamp it down to shape them into shells. Refrigerate for around 10-15 minutes or until chilled.

Now bake the shells for 10 minutes and remove from the oven. Again, with the dough tamper, tamp the puffed shells down. Bake for 5-8 minutes more or until golden brown. Let the shortbread shells cool down in the pan. Remove the shells and let them come to room temperature.

Shortbread is naturally crumbly. Hence you need not worry if some crust falls down.

When the shells come to room temperature, spoon the lilikoi butter into them. Top with pieces of fruits and mint leaves. Keep covered with a plastic wrap until it’s time to serve.

Lilikoi Butter Mochi

This typically Hawaiian dish can easily be a star of your party. It’s satisfying and delicious enough to become everyone’s favorite, and it’s super-quick to make!

Ingredients

• A jar of lilikoi butter
• 1 lb. mochi flour
• 1 tbsp. baking powder
• 5 eggs
• 12 oz. coconut milk
• 1 tbsp. vanilla extract
• ½ c. butter melted
• 3 c. sugar

Method

You just have to mix all the ingredients, except lilikoi butter and powdered sugar, together in a 10 x 14 inch pan and bake it for an hour at 375 degree F. Once cooked, take it out of oven and let it cool down. Mix lilikoi butter and powdered sugar, and glaze the baked mochi with this mixture while it’s still warm. Make pieces with a knife, and serve with vanilla ice cream and fruit slices. It makes around 24-25 pieces.

So, have you started looking for your lilikoi butter and planning to throw a party? Then check out Liko Lehua Fruit Butters to get delicious spreads delivered to your door.