pineapple guavas | silkannthreades

This post will be short and sweet, but not too sweet. It’s about cake; shortcake. Feijoa and Ginger shortcake to be precise.

Take a peek at the shortcake, freshly baked and cut. It’s rough and ready in appearance, exactly like the every day setting of my kitchen.

Now please help yourself to a piece*….of shortcake

and take a bite and let your taste buds linger on the soft buttery crust and luscious feijoa and ginger filling.

Here’s how it’s made:

110gm( 4 oz) butter & 110gm (half cup) sugar & 1 egg & 225gm flour, sifted & 1 tsp of baking powder & 7 to 9 feijoas, peeled and sliced & 9 small pieces of crystallised ginger, chopped & 2 T of sugar.

Soften butter and beat with sugar until creamy. Add egg and beat. Fold in sifted flour and baking powder. Shape into a ball and roll out on baking paper into a large oval shape. Leave the rolled pastry on baking paper and carefully place on baking tray. Slice feijoas reasonably thickly and cover half the pastry with the slices. Scatter the ginger over the fruit slices. Sprinkle with sugar. Carefully pick up ends of baking paper to ease empty half of shortcake over the feijoas. Crimp two edges together. Bake at 170C -180C deg for about 30 minutes until cooked through and nicely browned.

The recipe was dictated to me by a friend. It is one she uses a great deal but I don’t know its origins.

Finally, here is a photo of the feijoas, or pineapple guavas, from a previous post. For those of you who can’t find feijoas in your markets / shops, experiment with another slightly tangy, firm fleshed fruit.

*Something to chew on:

In my paternal grandmother’s family, if you were offered a ‘piece’, it meant a piece of bread. The piece of bread would be buttered and spread with jam and then sliced off the loaf. I don’t know if the use of the word piece in this way was widespread in early twentieth century New Zealand or was something peculiar to our family. Please note that there is a loaf of bread in the photo collage. You are welcome to a piece 🙂

At this time of the year, with autumn leaves in full fall, there is very little left to harvest from my garden, with the exception of pineapple guavas or, as we like to call them, Feijoas. The Feijoa tree is a relative newcomer to my small plot but it is already a prolific fruiter. I think most Feijoa trees are. It is also easy care and has beautiful flowers which appear around Christmas time. And it is evergreen, so it provides visual delight all year long.

Feijoas are one of my favourite fruits but I find they are a very polarizing fruit in New Zealand. People seem to either hate them or love them. I love them. I love them raw and I love them cooked….. with, what else, but GINGER. I make a delicious Feijoa and ginger short-cake (not available today, sorry 😦 ). Here’s a feast of photos instead.

: Hidden fruit

: Fruit basket

: Feijoas

: Raindrops on Feijoas

: Waiting to Fall

: Feijoa flowers

: Feijoa flower for Christmas

: Shapes

If you would like to know more about Feijoas/pineapple guavas here is a Wiki link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acca_sellowiana

One interesting fact about Feijoas is that the fruit is ready only when it falls on the ground. So we pick the fruit from the ground and not the tree, although I believe that, if you want to hasten the harvest, you can tickle the fruit and catch it as it falls.