Passion fruit bars

I'm happy now that I've found a couple of pals who loves sour goodies like I do. It means that I get to experiment more with some of my favourite mouth puckering fruits like lemons, limes and passion fruit and knowing that there'll certainly be willing "guinea pigs" for me. Heh.

We recently celebrated one of the sour fruit lover pal's birthday, and I decided to make some passion fruit bars for dessert. The first recipe I tried failed me (and failed me big time - that's a waste of butter and eggs!!! :( how depressing, I hate wasting ingredients, especially when food prices are constantly increasing.) and so I took a step back and went for the old lemon bar recipe I found back in my university days.

Passion fruit bars

Anything that good always contains butter. Yes, lots of it. 
The lemon bars recipe (as I remembered), was a kickass awesome one.  The crust was buttery and perfectly crumbly, and the filling was just tart enough to go *eeeeeee-yuums*. It's been a long while since I last made it though, so I decided to play around with it by replacing the lemon juice with passion fruit puree to see if it works.

It worked! Thankfully. It was not as sour as I thought it would have been though, probably cos the lemons and passion fruits have differing acidity? So anyway, I didn't dust a layer of icing sugar atop of it, cos I didn't want it to be too sweet (though it would have looked prettier for sure!).

I brought the bars over to the dinner, and even my other friend who didn't like desserts tried it and said it was good. She even took more than one piece (and she's one who normally eats about a mouth of dessert and call it quits) ! Ha. Yums.

On a side note, I'm proud to say I've finished the first tub of fruit puree that I had bought a few months back (passion fruit!). Am now contemplating what's the next flavour fruit puree I shall get. I'm thinking of getting a tub of mélange de fruits rouges that Evan mentioned a while back and used for her Hidemi Sugino's Fruit rouges...

Passion fruit bars (adapted from Deb at Smitten Kitchen)

Crust
1/2 pound unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 cups flour
1/8 teaspoon kosher salt

Passion fruit filling layer
4 XL eggs at room temperature
1 2/3 cups granulated sugar
2/3 cup passion fruit puree (frozen works fine, defrost before using though)
2/3 cup flour

Preheat the oven to 170°C and line and grease a 9" x 13" baking pan.
For the crust, cream the butter and sugar until light in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Combine the flour and salt and, with the mixer on low, add to the butter until just mixed. Dump the dough onto a well-floured board and gather into a ball. Flatten the dough with floured hands and press it into the greased baking sheet.
Bake the crust for 15 to 20 minutes, until very lightly browned. Let cool on a wire rack. Leave the oven on.

For the passion fruit filling layer, whisk together the eggs, sugar, passion fruit puree, and flour. Pour over the crust and bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or about five minutes beyond the point where the filling is set. Let cool to room temperature. Cut into squares and dust with icing sugar if desired.