Chocolate Pavlova With Mangoes

During one of my recent recipe hunting sessions in internet, I came across the goey goodness of pavlova. Easy that this desert was, I couldn’t help not baking it at home. I prepared the cake for Father’s Day but somewhere between my everyday business, forgot to post it.

Pavlova is an important part of the national cuisine of both Australia and New Zealand and it surely comes with an interesting history (I would let you check its wikipedia page for that). It is a meringue-based desert and is crusty (but still delicate) on the outside and soft like marshmallow on the inside.

The following is the recipe that I used, which is a combination of of couple of recipes that I found. So here it goes.

You Would Need

For The Pavlova

6 egg whites (at room temperature)

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp white vine vinegar

1/4 cup cocoa powder (sift it well before using)

For the Cream

1 and a 1/2 cups of heavy cream

2 tbsp powdered sugar

For the Topping

1 ripe mango – sliced

How to Go About It

The Preparation

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F.

Take a parchment paper and draw a circle with 8 inches of diameter. Turn the parchment paper over so that you marking comes to the reverse side. Line a baking sheet with this parchment paper.

The Pavlova

The first thing is beating the egg whites along with the salt. You can either whisk these together with an electric mixer (using the whisk attachment) or you can whisk them with hand. Difference being beating eggs with hand takes time and is a lot harder. The end product remains the same. Stubborn that I am, I again chose to do it by hand.

The only thing that you need to be cautious of is that your bowl and whisk are clean and free from grease otherwise the egg whites won’t whip the way you would want them to.

Beat egg whites till soft peaks form out.

Now start adding sugar, a couple of tablespoons at a time. As you add all of the sugar, continue beating till stiff and shiny peaks form.

Add in the vanilla extract and vinegar and continue beating till they have mixed well.

At this point of time, add in cocoa powder and using a spatula gently fold it in. The keyword here is ‘gently.’ You need to ensure that the cocoa powder is well mixed, however, you also need to be cautious that you are gentle with this mixing or else the egg whites will deflate. And you are ready with your meringue.

Spoon this meringue on the center of the circle that you drew on the parchment paper. Using the back of a spoon, spread it ‘gently,’ filling the circle that you drew. Try smoothing the edges and make the edges a little higher than the center.

Bake the pavlova in the oven for about 1 hour and 10 minutes. After that turn the oven off. Open the door of the oven ever so slightly and let the pavlova cool in the oven itself.  I let mine cool overnight.

The Cream

In a clean bowl, whisk the heavy cream till soft peaks are formed. Add in sugar and continue whisking till you get stiff peaks. Keep this whipped cream in the fridge for a couple of hours so that it gets nice and cold and sets as well.

For Serving

Place the pavlova in the plate that you’ll be serving it in. Mount the whipped cream on the pavlova and top it up by adding sliced mango.

You choice of fruits can be anything from strawberries to pomegranates. The best would be to use a fruit with flavor that stands out. Mangoes are in season right now, so they come delicious and juicy and that’s why I decided to use them.

How amazing the pavlova tasted, I cannot even begin to describe. It had a very thin crust and it was soft and goey and melt in mouth from the inside. We finished it at one go and that too with no regrets! Perhaps one. I would have wanted more mangoes on top (almost double of what I used).