Pavolva — "Pav" — the classic meringue dessert of Australasia. Crispy on the outside,
marshmallowy on the inside. I love it in the summertime. My version replaces the traditional
whipped cream topping with a pastry cream made from the leftover egg yolks. I really
prefer how the pastry cream tastes, though it does present some hazards.
Step one is get the oven heating to 350ºF, 180ºC.
For a light dessert, I think one egg serves two people. I'm making a four-egg pavlova.
And I'll separate out all the yolks, just passing them gently between my hands until
all the white slimes down through my fingers.
Like I said, save those — we'll make our topping with them. Now beat these whites to
soft peaks. People say the eggs need to be at room temperature — they can't be cold
when you whip the whites. I think that's one of those rules that mattered back when people
were whipping things by hand. They whip a little slower when they're cold. But I don't
care, because not for a million dollars would I make this dessert without an electric mixer.
There we go, soft peaks. Just took a couple minutes. Now — 50g of sugar per egg white.
I'm using powdered sugar and I am whipping it in a tiny bit at a time. Counterintuitively,
this comes together way faster if you add the sugar very slowly. You can dump it in
all at once, but then it takes a long time to whip it back up to firm peaks. A teeny
bit at a time makes the job way faster.
Yes, I'm using powdered sugar. Lots of recipes say you can't use powdered sugar because it
has a small amount of cornstarch in it to prevent clumping. They tell you to use superfine
sugar instead, castor sugar, which is hard to find in the States.
I did a side-by-side test with powdered sugar and a fine sugar that I made by running granulated
sugar in the blender for 20 minutes. Both pavlovas came out the same and the one that
I made with powdered sugar took way less time to mix. Ideally, you want to mix the meringue
until all the sugar is dissolved. You can feel whether it's dissolved by just rubbing
some merengue between your fingers.
If the sugar isn't dissolved, the baked meringue is gonna weep, or get little droplet of goo
dripping off it. You can make this with granulated sugar but to get it fully dissolved takes
like half an hour of mixing. The powdered sugar dissolves almost instantly.
And when it's all in, you can turn up the speed and beat this until you have stiff peaks,
which is still gonna take a bit. This took me another 10 minutes of whipping after I
got the sugar in. Not stiff enough yet. If it's not stiff, the meringue won't hold its
shape when you bake it, it'll just melt, and the inside won't be sufficiently aerated so
it'll be dense and slimy, not soft and pillowy.
Those are some stiff peaks right there. Nice. I'm sure it's possible to over-beat this to
the point where it would collapse, but that'd take a really long time. This much sugar really
stabilizes the foam.
Though we can stabilize it further with some cornstarch — I'm going to do half a teaspoon
per egg white. This makes the inside taste much more like a marshmallow, which I like.
Too much will get you a meringue that is strong and keeps forever but tastes super chalky
— aka a cheap store-bought meringue.
Another stabilizer is acid — maybe half a teaspoon of lemon or lime juice per egg
white. This makes the meringue less likely to collapse in the oven and it tastes good.
We could have put it in at the beginning to prevent over-whipping, but that would have
made the whipping take longer and the sugar made the over-whipping very unlikely anyway.
Just mix those in along with a pinch of salt for taste. Some recipes tell you to dissolve
the starch into the juice to make a slurry first. I tried that in a side-by-side test
and it made no appreciable difference in the end. This seems to whip in just fine as it
is.
Get a baking sheet, line it with parchment — the paper is totally essential here to
prevent sticking. Some people trace a circle on it to guide them as they spread the meringue.
That is not a thing that I am going to do. You can do all kind of shapes and dimensions,
but the taller it is the more likely it is to collapse.
I think it's good to make a little well in the center for the filling, and maybe a little
fence around the rim to keep everything in. Really I just like spiky meringue. Don't worry,
there's no way those thin tips are gonna burn, because we put this in the oven and then immediately
reduce the heat to 215ºF, 100ºC works good for me.
It gets an initial puff and then basically dries more than it cooks. 90 minutes at very
low temperature.
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Also while the pavlova is baking, you can make this pastry cream, which I would just
eat in a bowl by itself. It's pudding. One tablespoon of granulated sugar per egg yolk,
and then a teaspoon of cornstarch per egg yolk. That's gonna be a very thick paste at
first, but good — the more viscous it is, the easier it is to whisk out the lumps of
cornstarch. If you don't have a tiny whisk, a fork will do it. Gotta be totally smooth.
Now, we're probably gonna want like a quarter cup of water-based liquid per egg yolk — 60
mL per yolk. It could be water, it could be white wine, it could be milk, cream. I'm using
evaporated milk, which I really love. It really smooths the texture of things. But I'm only
measuring out 3/4 of my expected amount. I can always add, I can't subtract, and I want
this thicc.
Dump that milk into a little sauce pan on like medium-low heat. When it just starts
to simmer, whisk it directly into the egg yolk mixture. Tempering the eggs — it's
a fussy French technique that I have actually A-B tested against just cooking things straight
in the pan, and I do think it helps prevent scrambled eggs.
Speaking of which, just keep whisking this constantly over real gentle heat, like medium
low. We need to very slowly bring this up to a simmer. If it's not thickening after
a few minutes you could turn the heat up slightly, but be careful because as soon as that cornstarch
approaches the boiling point, whoa whoa whoa, turn that heat off and whisk like crazy.
I know that looks exactly like scrambled eggs, but it's not scrambled eggs. Those are clumps
of gelatinized starch, not coagulated egg protein, and you will be able to whisk them
smooth. See?
Time now to whisk in a tablespoon of butter per egg yolk — half a stick, in chunks so
that they melt a little faster. The residual heat in the pan should be enough to do it.
You don't want to overheat the butter or the emulsion will break.
Since I was conservative on my milk, this is too viscous to whisk back into a liquid.
But we're on the knife's edge here. Watch what happens with just the addition of a big
splash of vanilla. That's enough to make this pudding again. Though by the time it chills,
it'll be way too thick to spread. So I'll go ahead with the rest of my milk.
You can whisk in even more liquid later after it's chilled and get exactly the spreading
consistency you want. The only think you cannot do is thicken it back up again, which is why
I say start very thick.
Cover that so that it doesn't develop a skin, and chill. Now we just gotta wait for the
meringue to be done. When 90 minutes is up, just turn off the heat and let it sit in there
and dry for at least two hours, ideally overnight.
It'll be more structurally sound the next day, and the farty sulphur compounds in the
eggs will off-gas or breakdown, or something. You don't taste them as much the next day.
I had to shoot this on the same day I baked it, which is why this meringue is too delicate
to peel off the paper. That's fine — just serve it on the paper.
I'll cut up my fruit topping right before I want to eat. Kiwi is, of course, the traditional
favorite in Australasia. Peel and then slice thin. I like kiwi for this because it's sour.
The meringue is super sweet, so you eat it with tangy fruit and the two complete each
other.
Now, pavolva is a very tricky dessert only if you demand that your meringue's shell be
totally uncracked when you eat it. That's hard, and judging by pictures on the internet,
people rarely achieve uncracked perfection. Even if you do everything right, there's variations
with your oven or your eggs or atmospheric conditions or the specific gravity of your
topping — that collapse actually never happened with my test bakes, but hey, if you don't
want to risk it go with the traditional whipped cream. It's lighter. You could also fold pastry
cream into whipped cream and get the best of both worlds.
These are raspberries, by the way. Again, I think soft, sour fruits work best.
I don't really care about the collapse. The meringue is going to start crumbling the instant
you actually cut into it anyway. It's possible to get a decent looking single slice like
that, but in general if you want really attractive single portions, bake individual little pavlovas
— little plops of meringue on the baking sheet.
And no matter what size you do, top the meringue right before you eat. The toppings will immediately
start dissolving that cotton-candy-like crust. I like how that pastry cream functions like
a glue, keeping all the parts together on their trip to your mouth, which is right where
they belong — together.