Pavlova with pastry cream and red fruit & Happy Mother`s Day!

For me, this dessert is like a wildcard, it's easy, you won´t be much in the kitchen and it can please everyone (I hope so).

I prepared it to be eaten on Mother´s Day (here in Argentina) to my mother in law and the next day for my mother, two desserts, one time cooking. I made one with pastry cream and the other with whipped cream. I seized the yolks left to make a rich pastry cream.




Perhaps most of you are familiar with what is a Pavlova? In honor of the ballerina Anna Pavlova, and her  fluffy tutu, an unknowk chef named the dessert, a meringue base with whipped cream and red fruit filling, passion fruit and / or kiwi.


The meringue is crisp on the outside and soft inside, not like the meringue from the bakeries, which is completely crisp. Even if they wanted to make the dessert and do not want to prepare the meringue you can use bought, breaking glasses can be prepared in a little meringue and filling with cream and fruit on top.

Serves 6-7 people

Pavlova

Ingredients

Egg whites 4

200 g common sugar

Salt, pinch

Pastry Cream

Ingredients

Milk 500 cc

Egg yolks 4

125 g sugar

Corn starch 20 g

Vanilla extract 1 / 2 tsp

Also

Mixed berries 1 1 / 2 cup

Parchment paper

Procedure

- Prepare by heating the oven to 150 ° C and a oven baking  pan with a little bit of oil and then some parchment paper. The oil is for the paper so it won´t move while making the meringues.

- In a clean large bowl, beat egg whites and salt, until stiff

- Add sugar a little by little while beating. Keep beating for 7-8 minutes, or until the peaks are stiff.

- Take a large spoonful of meringue and make thick discs, about 2 cm thick, and 6 cm in diameter. In the oven they will grow, so do them smaller and separate from each other.

- Bake for 1 hour, maybe hour and a half, depending on the oven, how big and thick they are. To touch, they must be dry, but it may gave under small pressure. When you turn off the oven, they can be stored there, or in a closed container if there is high humidity.

- For the pastry cream, to make this recipe really easy I made it in the microwave: 

- Heat the milk for 3 minutes at full power.

- Mix yolks and cornstarch. Then add sugar and mix again with a whisker.

- Incorporate hot milk to the yolks little by little and mix well.

- Take it to the microwave (in a safe bowl) and cook on high power until firm, about 4-5 minutes.

- At half time, beat with a whisker to mix and continue cooking.

- Remove, stir well, until homogenized and store in container in the refrigerator, covered with plastic wrap until ready for dessert. Before serving, mix very well to make it a smooth cream. If you like more liquid, you can add milk at this point.

To build it, is really simple, on the plate put the meringue, the pastry cream and then the berries.

I added a chocolate sauce made with the recipe of water ganache, with boiling water instead of orange juice,  and to serve, alone, just warm it in the microwave. I´ll put this recipe in the next post.

You can make some changes, like rather than the berries, use syrup pears or cooked in red wine, or add chocolate sauce, or add a spoonful of cocoa to the meringue and make chocolate one´s, or whipped cream, or cocoa to the whipped cream, strawberries, and so on.