Is this what they eat in heaven?

(Photo by distopiandreamgirl)

Man, that's one fancy, three-tiered pavlova! That would definitely be awesome to have at a wedding.

Pavlova, or pav, is a New Zealand/Australian meringue dessert topped with whipped cream and fruit; it was named after the ballerina Anna Pavlova. This dessert, though, doesn't have to be so complex. It can be more simple (but still delicious-looking) like this:

(Photo by thenoodleator)

I had the opportunity to first taste and even help make pavlova a few years ago with an Australian resident at my dormitory for a couple Australia-themed events. These desserts were much loved by the people in attendance, but I didn't think about this dessert again until I designed a food newsletter that featured a recipe for pavlova.

While I have had the pleasure of eating this fabulous treat, my boyfriend hadn't, and I really wanted to share it with him by making one for his birthday. While it's one thing to look at delectable pictures (such as Flickr's pavlova group pool), it's totally different to experience the taste firsthand. Part of the beauty of pavlova is its contrast: A crispy shell contains a marshmallow texture inside; the sweet meringue with whipped cream can be topped with different fruits, including more tart ones such as certain berries, kiwis, etc.

I did a lot of research online, checking out different recipes and helpful hints. Here are some that I found especially useful:

• The Joy of Baking - This provides a great introduction/explanation of pavlova.
• Simply Recipes - This has pictures to illustrate each step of the process and is especially useful to people interested in making individual-size pavlova, instead of one, big cake.
• About.com - There are instructions for making a regular pavlova and mini versions, but what I found the most helpful was an article called "The Biggest Mistakes When Making Meringue."

I read a comment to a pavlova recipe somewhere that this is what they must eat in heaven. Wouldn't that be great?

I actually ended up using a recipe from Recipezaar (the website is currently going by the name Food.com) called My N Z Pavlova. I ended up choosing this recipe because it's suppose to make a pavlova that serves 10-12 people (at the time, I thought I wanted to make a large pavlova), and it had glowing reviews. Plus, this is a family recipe for the person who submitted it: In 2005, Jen T said she had been making it for 35 years! She must be doing something right.

I followed her recipe almost exactly, except for the first step:

"Prepare a baking sheet by greasing lightly with butter and placing on it a sheet of tinfoil or baking paper. Grease the tinfoil and then shake on a few drops of cold water and smear around leaving a thin film of water."

I wonder if this would have been helpful to do to make it easier to remove the cooled pavlova from the "baking paper" (I used parchment paper). While cookies have slid off easily from parchment paper without this treatment in the past, the pavlova was so delicate that I was afraid to break it when it didn't come off easily. Therefore, the parchment paper stayed.

To get an idea of what my pavlova looked after it cooled, here's a picture of me getting ready to put whipped cream on it:

(This and the rest of my step-by-step photos are by my boyfriend)

Cooled and out of the oven, it looked like the right color. The cracking of the shell is totally normal. However, it had started to cave in at the top, perhaps from the indentation I made with the spatula before baking it. My boyfriend started snacking on the flakes from the cracking shell, while we were transporting it from my place to his house.

The whipped cream was made with a half-pint of heavy whipping cream, a half-teaspoon of vanilla, and a one-eighth cup of granulated sugar that were whipped into a lightly sweetened cream:

The cream was just enough to cover the center, but nothing else. For such a big pavolva (8 inches in diameter), I should have made at least double the amount of whipped cream if I cared about aesthetics (e.g. covering up more of the collapsing top and spots where the shell flaked off). However, this was just a tester pavlova, and besides, the most important thing is taste!

You can be very creative with your toppings. For mine, my boyfriend happened to have blueberries at his house, and I brought along some strawberries that we sliced up. I had chosen strawberries because I thought they'd make a nice combo with a special ingredient I had made while the pavlova was baking: lemon curd (you know, for a strawberry lemonade effect).

Since a meringue-based dessert like pavlova requires only egg whites, you need to figure out what to do with your yolks. I decided to make lemon curd because my boyfriend loves lemon flavor; he was the one who almost overdosed on lemon bars, after all. In fact, he thought the lemon curd tasted like the filling in those bars. I followed Alton Brown's recipe, except I added six yolks (since I had used six egg whites for the pavlova) and I cooked it on the stove for 20 minutes like some people suggested in the comments, instead of eight. I also found that refrigerating it for at least a few hours before using it helped thicken it:

Luscious, isn't it? After adding more berries and drizzling more lemon curd over the top, this was the result:

Including me, eight people tried some (good thing my boyfriend had some family over at his place). You know what? They loved it, and so did I! You know what else? The texture was just as it should be: crispy on the outside and marshmallow-like on the inside! It was almost like I didn't need to make a test pavlova at all, since it turned out so well. However, I'm glad I did because I definitely learned while making it.

I had a mini-dilemma when it came to whether I should make pavlova for my boyfriend's birthday as planned: His family will celebrate on his real birth date when they're out-of-town this weekend for a wedding, probably with cake and presents. That means they won't be having a celebratory gathering for him when they return, one in which I can participate. That means that I probably shouldn't make a large pavlova like I did for my "test" -- if I should make pavlova at all.

A dry pavlova can last several days if it's stored properly in a non-humid place, but once you add the whipped cream, fruit, etc., it will only last a few hours before it becomes a soggy mess. I had leftovers after my test pavlova because the slices were fairly large to begin with and no one wanted second slices. It was edible the next day, but it definitely was not as good as when it was freshly decorated.

My boyfriend encouraged me to make pavlova again for his birthday if that was what I had wanted to do all along, instead of feeling discouraged that I wouldn't be making it for his birthday "party" (he said he just celebrates with his family informally, instead of have a party anyways). He certainly enjoyed pavlova the first time around and would definitely look forward to it if I made it again. This time for his belated birthday, I think I'm going to make individual or mini pavlovas, so that we only decorate what we can eat at the time and the rest of the meringues maintain a fresh, contrasty texture for much longer. He wants the exact same fruit toppings as before, especially the lemon curd.

Well, whatever the birthday boy wants, that's what he'll get!