Fruit purée recipes

[Chester86]

Hey everyone I am looking to make my own fruit purées to use in my bonbons. Does anyone make their own? Or have recipes?

thanks 

[pastrygirl]

It's a good idea to cook your fruit at least briefly to pasteurize it and kill any yeasts or bacteria that may be present.  Cooking will also soften the fruit and help it break down. 

 

Depending on how juicy  or tart the fruit, add up to 10-20% water by weight and 10-20% sugar by weight.  For example, raspberries would need very little water or sugar, pears or apples need more liquid, and rhubarb might appreciate extra sugar. 

[Tri2Cook]

I'm thinking about taking advantage of the abundance of local wild blueberries this year and making some puree for chocolate use. I can't decide between cooking just enough to soften then pureeing and freezing or reducing the puree before freezing to comcentrate it. I'm leaning towards the latter... blueberry flavor doesn't seem to suffer much from cooking. Thoughts?

[Kerry Beal]

12 hours ago, Tri2Cook said:

I'm thinking about taking advantage of the abundance of local wild blueberries this year and making some puree for chocolate use. I can't decide between cooking just enough to soften then pureeing and freezing or reducing the puree before freezing to comcentrate it. I'm leaning towards the latter... blueberry flavor doesn't seem to suffer much from cooking. Thoughts?

Hmmm - I always just freeze them whole!

[Tri2Cook]

59 minutes ago, Kerry Beal said:

Hmmm - I always just freeze them whole!

Me too but I was thinking it might be handy to have puree ready to use on a whim. And since fruit purees frequently get reduced for use in ganache and other confection related stuff, I thought if I already had that part done, even better. But then it occurred to me that I've actually not seen many blueberry based ganache or confection recipes and can't really remember if those I have seen called for the puree to be concentrated. So I decided to defer to the wisdom of eGullet for my concentrated vs. not decision. 

[Bentley]

Making purees is more complicated than it sounds.  You need to adjust for the sugar and water content of each batch of fruit in order to get a consistent product.  If it is something you plan to do on a regular basis, you should invest in a quality refractometer and a pH-meter.  The basics involve adjusting your purees to a brix of around 18-22, with a pH no lower than 4.  You can adjust the values by mixing fruit from different orchards and adding sugar, invert sugar or glucose (depending on the desired sweetness and the tartness of the fruit).  For some tart fruits like passion fruit, citrus, etc, you can mix in quantities of a neutral fruit like pear (also lowers overall food costs).  Once your number are in range, you then need to adjust for taste/flavor.  You can use flavor extracts or compounds here, fruit reductions, etc.  It's very much a combination of science and art.