Recipe: Pavlova topped with strawberry and cream
Recipe improvised from My Inner Foodie
175g egg white
175g sugar
2 tablespoon cornflour
2tsp white vinegar
Preheat 160celcius
Spread to 10cm diameter meringue and bake in 120 celcius for 90 mins or more
Tips:
1) Make the pavlova HIGH, but don’t pile too high, follow the diameter mentioned in recipe. MUST beat egg white till STIFF peak, else the meringue will flatten and widen during the baking/cooling process
2) A lot of recipe specifying to leave meringue to cool in oven to prevent pavlova shrinking due to cold air, i try to place a gap on the oven using a fork or something, then wait till the thermometer in oven showing oven temp to much lower temp
3) Once the meringue is cooled, must store somewhere “safe” and not on counter top, as ants will definitely come. This coming from experience. Experience the horror of looking at perfectly baked crispy meringue all covered with ants. Oh no!
4) Meringue will weep (watery-looking sugar crystal sweating/weeping down the side during baking process) caused by sugar not fully incorporated, remember the beaten meringue felt slight grainy with unincorporated sugar when I touched the whisk before shaping the beaten meringue into disk to be baked
5) Try putting the pavlova in the middle of oven. For meringue, i normally put the baking pan into lower end of the oven fearing the top of pavlova will brown too much, ending up, the bottom of pavlova become very much crispy (see the bottom most picture of this post), while top not yet became crispy. Just put in middle rack, and if the top become too brown, just top with some baking paper.
looks not bad
Above is 2nd try using below recipe: I used 4 egg whites and only 130g sugar, it turned out all marshmallowy and does not have crispy exterior 🙁 Looks good, tall, but it is actually sticky soft outside, and not nice! The outer is supposed to be crispy
For the above third try, i finally tested a good egg white to sugar ratio (ie same weight for egg white and sugar): 175g sugar, 175 egg white, bake 2 hours 120 celcius. The previous try of lowering the sugar use too much wasn’t working to well, anyway, this is easy to remember: same amount of egg white and sugar
The use of 4 egg whites stated in most recipe can be very vague, some eggs can be larger than others…
4th try: successful with crispy exterior and mashmallowy center, although it looks very crackly outside
looks pretty top with strawberry and blueberries
yummy
bottom too crispy as i baked in lower rack