These are the first sweet recipes on my blog and may be the last as I don’t often make sweet things. But its a weekend of celebrations and our feijoa trees are heaving. Today I used 2.5 kilos of scooped out feijoas but didn’t even make a dent in today’s feijoa fall.

The crumble and icecream are for family and neighbours coming for dinner at our place on Sunday. I doubled the recipe for 13 people, nearly half of them kids. I can’t remember where this recipe came from so cant give credit, but have altered the original by swapping some of the cream out with yoghurt. If anyone knows where this recipe was originally published please let me know in the comments. This recipe below is before being doubled.

Feijoa Icecream

With a beater or mixer, beat 200 gm feijoa flesh, 200 gm sugar and 1 egg white until it looks like meringue. This sounds totally odd but believe me, it works, see photo 2 below for proof.

In another bowl beat 250 ml cream until firm but still gloopy, and fold into the feijoa mixture. Finally gently stir through 50 ml plain yoghurt.

Scoop the mixture in a shallow flat dish and put in the freezer. When it starts to freeze stir it regularly every hour or so to prevent crystals forming.

Gluten free feijoa and autumn fruit crumble

This is for the gluten free family. By now I was so bored with scooping out feijoas I added rhubarb to bulk it out.

Fill an oven proof dish with feijoas and add other autumn fruit still being harvested – rhubarb is a nice colour, pears and apples are sweeteners. Sprinkle with sugar to taste and put in a 170 C oven to cook until the juices run. You don’t need to put the topping on until then because nothing in it needs to be cooked and otherwise it will burn before the fruit is cooked

Gluten free crumble topping

125 gm butter

100 gm brown sugar

1/2 cup sunflower seeds

1/2 cup pumpkin seeds

1/2 cup coconut flour

1/2 cup desiccated coconut

Blitz the sugar and butter in the food processor until creamy then add the seeds and pulse until your desired consistency is achieved – fine crumbs or chunky, its up to you. Add the coconut flour and desiccated coconut, pulse again a couple of times. Sprinkle over the cooked fruit and return to the hot oven until the topping is nicely browned and the juices bubbling around the edges.

I haven’t tried this, but if you want it to be dairy free as well, try swapping the butter with the thick part out of a can of coconut cream.

Spiced Feijoa Shortcake

This weekend friends and family gathered to celebrate the life of our friend Jennie who passed away 20 years ago last week. The tradition that began 20 years ago was bubbles at the graveside and I made a feijoa shortcake to go with it. I found the recipe for this shortcake on a delightful New Zealand blog called Home Grown Happiness.

I doubled the recipe which entailed the daunting task of scooping out 1 kg more of feijoas from the skins. Luckily no one was in the house so I put on Young Americans, my favourite sing-along album. By the time Somebody up there likes me came on the scooping was over and I did the dishes singing backing vocals with John Lennon to Across the Universe. Jennie would have loved the show.