Mary Berry’s Christmas Pavlova
Mary Berry’s Christmas Pavlova
Mary Berry’s Christmas Pavlova is truly a holiday show stopper. While I am not a huge watcher of cooking shows, I enjoy watching The Great British Bake Off. It is a friendly and fun competition. Not like the cooking competition shows in the US where they are cut-throat with yelling and meanness rule. That is not my thing. I like niceness and kindness. Any way back to the pavlova, I saw this on the Master Class program where Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood create desserts by showing you how to make them. The Christmas program was my favorite. A couple recipes I want to try and this was one of them.
I was intimidated by this recipe at first. I have never made a pavlova; however, in Ireland they are a very common dessert. My Auntie Carmel is known to make a pretty amazing one. The recipe is using British ingredients with American English equivalents and measurements. I purchased vanilla bean paste and caster sugar through Amazon. I only converted the oven temps from celsius to fahrenheit. When baking, I am finding it is better to weigh your ingredients than using cups. Baking is more science than art. It is worth investing in scale that does grams and ounces.
Ingredients
- For the pavlova
- - 6 large egg whites
- - 350g/12oz caster sugar or super fine sugar
- - 1 tsp white wine vinegar
- - 1 tsp cornflour (corn starch)
- For the filling
- - 600ml/20fl oz double cream or whipping cream
- - 1 tsp vanilla bean paste
- - 50g/1¾oz icing sugar or powdered sugar, sifted
- - 200g/7oz strawberries, hulled and quartered
- - 300g/10½oz raspberries
- - 200g/7oz blueberries
- - a few mint leaves, to decorate (optional)
- - icing sugar or powdered sugar, for dusting
Preparation
- - Preheat the oven to 160C/140C Fan/Gas 3 or 285F.
- - Line a large baking tray with baking parchment and draw a 30cm/12in circle in the middle of the paper.
- - Put the egg whites in a clean mixing bowl and whisk with an electric whisk until soft peaks form when the whisk is removed.
- - Gradually add the sugar a little at a time, whisking on maximum speed until they are stiff and glossy.
- - Mix the vinegar and cornflour in a cup until smooth, then stir into the egg whites.
- - Spoon the meringue onto the ring drawn on the baking parchment.
- - Using a large spoon make a shallow trench in the meringue for the cream and fruit to sit in.
- - Transfer to the oven and immediately reduce the temperature to 140C/120C Fan/Gas 1 or 250F. - --- Bake for 1 hour–1 hour 15 minutes, until the outside is hard but still white.
- - Turn the oven off and leave the pavlova inside for an hour or overnight to cool and dry.
- - To assemble, whip the cream, vanilla paste and icing sugar until stiff peaks form when the whisk is removed.
- - Spoon the cream into the trench in the meringue.
- - Arrange the strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and pomegranate on top and decorate with a few mint leaves, if using.
- - To serve, dust with icing sugar and cut into wedges.
Hello! I'm Ann Marie and I wear the well-worn apron. Join me as explore plant-based eating while I live on an island off the U.S. state of Rhode Island.