Hawaiian guava cake with pink buttercream, both made from concentrated, cooked down guava juice. The cake is light, made with egg whites. Guava is like a wonderful cross between strawberry and passion fruit. And the cake is very, very pink.
Very, very pink
Hawaiian guava cake caught my eye in NY Times Cooking newsletter, possibly because it was very pink. But I was also certainly intrigued by anything Hawaiian, my preconceptions being: don’t they only eat, like, FLOWERS and drink piña colada?
Also intriguing was the guava fruit, about which I had a quick scuffle with The Weather Man on whether we have ever seen/bought/tried it or not. I was right (what else is new?), since it doesn’t live on the shelves and stalls we get our supplies from. He was thinking of mango, papaya – heaven knows, maybe even pineapple.
What to substitute for guava concentrate?
Once I established neither fresh fruit nor the guava concentrate was available in my neck of woods, it became a challenge.
Following the tips supplied in the NYT recipe, I bought guava juice drink. ‘Juice drink’ is that peculiar beverage that pretends to be healthy but admits it can’t be called just ‘juice’ because it’s made from concentrate and has a whack of sugar and preservatives added.
That didn’t bother me: after all having been baked in the cake, even fresh guava wouldn’t remain raw and healthy.
The key thing is to cook the juice down to make it usable, which also disappointingly dulls the vibrant pink colour somewhat.
Guava is truly an exotic fruit
Fresh guava must be pretty gorgeous fresh as it smells like passion fruit and tastes like strawberry: I can’t imagine a lovelier fruity combination.
I don’t know if they make their cakes with fresh guava in Hawaii but even the cooked down ‘juice drink’ imparts a fantastic flavour. The colour, not so much, hence the help of food colouring but obviously you can leave the cake pale and natural.
So what is the whole thing like? A little squishy but very light, moister than angel food cake but lighter than sponge. Soft, tender, and wonderfully fragrant with guava. Aloha!
How to make guava cake batter
It would seem a completely ordinary start to a cake: creaming butter and sugar. But to that we add egg whites only, plus the addition of oil makes for a very tender and moist crumb – and that’s regardless of the milk and reduced guava juice.
Apparently the guava concentrate is enough to give the crumb the lovely pink colour. I have to resort to food colouring, but the flavour from the reduced juice is delightful.
I like to bake it in a square tin but it can just as well be baked in a round one, 23cm/9 inch.
The frosting
The frosting in my version is a deviation from the original recipe, but just lovely. Buttercream fluffed up with the guava concentrated juice, plus a few drops of the food colouring I can’t resist.
Cream cheese frosting may well be more traditional (eh? Philadelphia cream cheese? authentically Hawaiian? I don’t know about that) but it’s so common it’s really a bit boring, and buttercream looks more luscious over the cake.
More colourful cake recipes
Matcha (green tea) sponge cake with lemon and bay leaf scented whipped cream frosting. It’s a beautiful dessert, beautifully simple to make (but nobody will believe you how easy it is).
Red velvet cake recipe decorated with dried cake crumbs. Red velvet cake is either a red, bright red or red-brown colour obtained by adding beetroot or food colouring to the cake mix. My red velvet cake is frosted with a cream cheese, mascarpone and whipped cream mix.
Caribbean Christmas black cake with rum soaked fruit and burnt sugar flavour. It is the Jamaican or Trinidad cousin of British Christmas cake and it stands tall in comparison!
More egg white based cake recipes
Angel food cake is light as air, fatless and egg yolk-less. Egg whites whipped to a cloud, with only a whisper of flour and no baking powder, it bakes in a special tin with a chimney, or an ungreased ring tin. Best decorated with cream and berries!
Cherry cream dacquoise is an exquisite gateau which is far easier to make than you’d think. Almond meringue dacquoise layers filled with fresh cream and homemade candied cherries – a riff on black forest gateau.
King Oscar II cake is also known as Swedish almond tart. It's an almond macaron style cake filled with almond buttercream, easy to make and absolutely delightful.