Feijoa heaven

A very sweet colleague and fellow foodie P, recently left generous bag of freshly picked feijoas on my desk.  She had recently been introduced to a friend's "feijoa crumble" and hasn't stopped raving about it.

I'd never eaten a feijoa.  When I opened the bag and emptied them into a bowl, immediately an incredibly pungent and delicious smell arose - not fundamentally dissimilar to quince.

Ok so they don't look appealing.  Almost like an unripened fig.  Cutting them open, they don't look terribly appetising either.

Not to be disheartened, I pondered for a while on what to do with them.  I thought about P's crumble fixation, and entertained the idea of doing an apple/feijoa combo crumble.  But I need to do some baking to take into work tomorrow to celebrate some birthdays, and a crumble isn't really convenient for that purpose.  I decided on adapting my tried and tested friand recipe.  I sliced about 6 feijoas in half and scraped out the insides with a teaspoon, then mashing roughly in a bowl with the back of a fork.  I also decided to keep the raspberries and lemons in the recipe, adding some sliced almond to the top just before putting them in the oven.

Sen-SATIONAL.  I've said it before, I'll say it again:  I wish I could somehow record smell in this blog.  The aroma that wafted out of my oven when I took them out, was completely out-of-this-world-good.   I couldn't resist biting into a warm one - let me promise you, it was very, very good.  The feijoa made the friands super moist and the flavour was a bit like passionfruit in nature.  The raspberries and lemon were definitely worthwhile too - sweet feijoa against tartness works really well.