Flat Pav... 2nd time's a charm

I am competent in the kitchen. Not Amazing, but I can work my way through a recipe and produce something reasonably tasty and rustic looking. While meringues are something I do fairly well, I had never before attempted a pavlova.

I love pavlova. The sweet, light, crunch of the meringue, the soft, smooth, creaminess of the cream and the tart-sweet firmness of the fruit checks all my boxes for a great desert.

I make awesome meringues, so a pavlova must be just as easy. I went online and found a recipe. The recipe I found uses cornflour (which my recipe doesn't use), it all went according to plan. but when I took it out of the oven, it had flopped in the middle and was flat. I don't know why I didn't just use my own tried, tested and loved recipe.

Thankfully it wasn't for a special occasion, so it wasn't a train smash, I finished it off with cream and blue berries and it tasted great, even if it was flat.

Then a few weeks later, we had awesome weather and I decided to make a sunshine pavlova, to celebrate summer, and to experiment with my food colouring.

I used my own meringue recipe (well technically its my Gran's Economical recipe) and made a few smaller meringues for the kids and made the pavlova base. I made it yellow, the colour of sunshine. I also thought it would offset the blue berries I had bought nicely. Blue and yellow is a favourite colour combo of mine.

And this is how it turned out:

I love it. My recipe is simple, quick and pretty much flop proof, as long as you separate your egg carefully, and use clean, greaseproof utensils.

I plopped the cream in the middle of my Pav base and then added a few smaller meringues as decoration around the edge of the pavlova, for extra drama.

 And the Yellow came out so perfectly, every spoon was a little mouthful of sunshine.

Diet???? What diet?

Maud Kinsgley's Economical Meringues:

Make sure your utensils and bowl are spotless, try to use a glass or metal bowl, as plastic tends to hold  onto grease even after you wash it. Use an electric beater, unless you are prepared to stand there beating away for an hour or so.

- 1 egg white (make sure you get no yolk, otherwise it won't whip up nicely)
- 25ml Boiling water
- 5 ml Vanilla extract
- 1 tbs White spirit vinager
- 1 cup caster sugar
- 1 tsp baking powder

Method:
1. Preheat your oven to 120degC, and line a baking tray with baking paper/parchment paper.

2. Place all ingredients EXCEPT the baking powder into your super-spotless-grease-free bowl, and beat with an electric mixer on hight speed until the meringue is VERY stiff. You will know when its ready when you can turn the bowl upside down and nothing comes out. It will be white and glossy and all the sugar will have dissolved.

(if you want to colour them stir through your chosen colour at this stage in the recipe, before you add the baking powder)

3. Sieve in the baking powder and fold it onto the meringue gently.

4. Either pipe shapes (using a piping bag and nozzle), drop teaspoonfuls (for small meringues) or plop the whole lot into the middle of the lined baking sheet and spread it out gently to a round/square/oval/what-ever-takes-your-fancy- shape. Don't let it touch the sides of the pan. and be GENTLE!

5. Bake at 120degC for 15 minutes, then turn the oven down to 100degC for 30 minutes.

6. Turn the oven off and allow to cool in the oven, if you have the patience. Failing that, remove it from the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes, scoff a few meringues while no-one is looking.

This recipe will make a good sized Pavlova, or 24 - 36 smaller meringues, depending on how small/big you make your drops.

As you can see this recipe only uses ONE egg. so you don't have to worry about left over egg yolks. Also, this recipe can easily be doubled if necessary.

Happy Summer! Let me know if you try these, and if you do, say a small thanks to my gran, who passed on her savvy.