What to do with sour overripe kiwis?
If they’re sweet, my kids love them. If they’re not too ripe, I eat them. But these were overripe and sour.
The last kiwi jam I made was more of a chutney, and while it was good on chicken, I simply don’t use it enough to make again – I ended up throwing away part of the kiwi-pineapple chutney. I had tried before this kiwi matcha cake recipe. The results were more of a bread than a cake as the kiwis then were also sour. It also came out a bit dense. My eldest liked it, but my youngest wouldn’t touch it. And to be fair, part of the reason I didn’t like it was that I tried butter flavoured margarine in it and the fake butter taste was not a good addition. Also, what is matcha?
I looked around the net a bit more and found this kiwi cake recipe. This looked promising as the kiwis were cooked in advance with sugar and lemon so they would be softer and sweeter (in effect, making kiwi jam and putting it in a cake). Also, no butter (or butter flavoured margarine – I am not making that mistake again). The result was a perfect fruit cake to have with tea – the epitome of a tea cake. It reminded me of the apple cakes I used to like, where the bits of apple where hidden in a moist vanilla flavoured cake. Here the result was very similar, but without the vanilla (the brown sugar has a nice taste, though), and bits of kiwi. It was absolutely delicious! I still don’t know how my kids will react to it, but I already ate a whole row for breakfast…
For convenience, I ‘ll copy the recipe here with my changes and comments. As usual, I ignored the icing. Also, I used the microwave instead of an extra saucepan.
Ingredients:
About 5 medium-size overripe kiwi fruit
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp fresh lemon juice
1 large egg
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
pinch salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
Preheat oven to 180° C.
Peel and chop the kiwi fruit. Place in a pyrex bowl with a lid. Add sugar and lemon juice and mix well. Cover pyrex and cook on high in microwave for 1 minute. Take out and stir. Cook another minute. Take out and stir. At this point, the kiwi looked pale green as specified in the original recipe, but I wanted it to be a little less liquid, so I removed the lid and cooked it on high for another minute. I set aside. (It was still pretty liquid, though.)
In a small bowl, mix egg and oil. In a large bowl, sift flour and baking powder and salt.
Add baking soda to kiwi mixture. Mix. The result is kiwi foam, very surprising at first but probably what gives the cake its texture. I think that I should have waited for the kiwi to cool a bit more perhaps (it would have caused less foam) but honestly, how long does it take to stir two bowls of ingredients?
Mix kiwi foam and egg mixture. The result is still very foamy.
Add foam to flour mixture. At this point it begins looking more like cake batter. Mix until moistened (do not overmix) and place in 20 cm square pan (This was my mistake. I thought it was a square pan, but 5×9 inches is more like a loaf pan. I’ll use loaf next time). Level cake in pan (this is important, as it doesn’t level out in the oven – a side effect of using oil and not butter/margarine). Bake in oven about 20 minutes (the cooking time is much less than the original because I used a bigger pan). Cake is ready when brown on top and toothpick comes out clean.
Let cool and eat!
Amazing recipe!
I used half the sugar and sprinkled on some rolled oats and wheat bran on top. Super tasty!
I am on my third attempt now and using 2 kiwis and strawberries that were getting old to replace the other kiwis. It’s in the oven now and seems extremely promising!!
Thanks a lot!
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Sounds great, let us know how it works! I also sometimes wonder what to do with the last few strawberries, if it turns out good I’ll try this (Usually I make a strawberry apple crumble). Thanks for your feedback!
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I just tried it. With 7 left over Kiwi and a kaki fruit, and adjusted the other ingredients to match the excess fruit… and cut down on the sugar a bit because the kaki was so sweet… Turned out great! There is still a faint sour taste because of the kiwi, though it is subtle and lovely. I used walnut oil instead of regular oil… and I added a little bit more baking powder and a teaspoon of cornstarch to make it fluffier… thanks for the recipe!
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Great! I’ll try adding cornstarch next time as well. Thanks for the idea and the feedback!
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Greetings from Ottawa, Canada!
Kiwis were on sale this week so I picked some up to make some jam.
Afterwards I had a few left over, so after a bit of googling, I landed on your site and made the kiwi cake! It turned out great and it was delicious! Definately on our to-do again list! And I’ll have to make sure that my kids are around to watch the kiwis foam up (that’s the best part) 🙂
Thanks for sharing the reicpe!
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Greetings from Jerusalem, Israel!
I’m so glad you liked it! I hope you’ll also enjoy the other recipes. If you wnat to show your kids a great experiment, put some baking soda and vinegar together and it will foam away. For extra interest, you can so as proposed here: http://www.kidsmakestuff.com/articles/show/m35q
Bon apetit!
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Greetings from Hawaii! Thanks for posting the recipe! I had a lot of kiwis and was glad to come across it. The cake came out well, although I did have to cook it a lot longer than 20 minutes before my toothpick came out clean. What was the original time (when using a loaf pan)? It’s a very unusual tasting cake with a unique look (from all of the seeds). But it was fun to try it out. Thanks again and happy cooking!
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The original time was 55 minutes, so it makes sense that it took you longer. I’m glad you liked it! Happy cooking!
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To improve this, it would be better to add the soda to the flour mixture, rather than adding it to the kiwis. The point of the soda is to make CO2 bubbles to make the cake rise. If you add it directly to the kiwis+lemon (acidic), the soda (a base) will make all the CO2 before it is in the cake! Hence, the foaming mentioned. The result is that it will do nothing for the cake itself. Note that the mixing step (wet+dry) should be minimal so as not to burst all those bubbles in the batter.
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Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll do it that way next time! If anyone tries this, please let us know if the cake was lighter as a result.
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p.s. matcha is Japanese green tea powder.
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Thanks! Never saw it in the supermarket…
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Greetings from New Zealand, the home of kiwifruit and kiwis too! Please do not confuse the two. A kiwifruit (formerly called Chinese gooseberry) is what you eat and what I believe you are using in your lovely recipes. A kiwi is actually a shy, nocturnal, flightless bird, native to New Zealand, protected, and used as a national emblem for NZ. We do NOT eat Kiwis!!
The word Kiwi is also used colloquially to mean a New Zealander. We don’t tend to eat these either.
I will enjoy eating this cake which I am going to bake now!
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You are so right (and you made me laugh out loud 😀 ). I used the term as it’s used in Hebrew, where the fruit is termed a kiwi and the bird is the kiwi bird. And I don’t eat new Zealanders either 😉
I hope the cake turns out good, let me know. Nice meeting you!
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The cake was so delicious, I made two! I will use this recipe a lot, thank you. 🙂
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Great, I’m glad you liked it!
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I’m not sure what I did wrong here, possibly everything :-p but my cake never really got to the cake stage… After 45 minutes the toothpick wasn’t clean but it was burning around the outside so I took it out anyway. I opted to use a loaf tin as it was mentioned that this was in the original recipe, but I think this was a mistake. Maybe the cooking temperature was lower in the original recipe? Anyway, it tastes good but very chewy round the edges and raw in the middle.The flavour is very sweet and I think probably less sugar would have been a better option. The batter was very wet so maybe I went wrong before getting it into the oven. Something for me to nibble at a bit but not to share.
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Thanks for sharing! It sounds as though the kiwis were very juicy so there were too many liquids. If you try this again and the batter is still wet, perhaps add some more flour to balance it? It also sounds as though your kiwis were sweet – the sugar amount is for sour kiwis. I hope next time turns out better 🙂
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It was lovely 😊 thank you she much for a very friendly recipe;)
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I’m glad you liked it!
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Pretty good..i think next time ill add 1 tsp of almond extract. Ive used that combo in kiwi muffins and it adds a little extra 🙂
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I’ve never tried it before with kiwis, thanks for the tip! Let me know how that works for you 🙂
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