Be Conspicuous: Pavlovas

My very first pavlova made for him, with love. <3

So I have followed the recipe on Yigit Pura's
cookbook, sweet alchemy: dessert magic. For all the dumb people out there who do not know who he is, please educate yourself! *winks*

It was supposed to be a french lavender pavlova. Due to whatever reasons, I could not find any lavender oil being sold in Ipoh, let alone some ORGANIC roses that can be eaten. I tried, people, I TRIED.

Apparently, there were lots of problems, I could not follow EXACTLY what the recipe tells. Yes, the eggs are at room temperature. The thing was preheating the oven. My oven can only go as low as 100°C. Substituted the white distilled vinegar with apple vinegar, just had to use whatever is in the house so I did not have to buy EVERYTHING *grins*, then added the food colouring into it. Thank goodness that I did not have to use baking paper anymore. The cutting and measuring is annoying. I had some silicon pats that were so generously bought and gifted to me OR my mother by my auntie. THANKS, SANDIA! <3

So I whisked the egg whites, lemon juice, to stabilise the egg whites until soft peaks, then gradually added the 200g of granulated sugar, WHICH I think is a bit too much. Next, the mixture of cornstarch and more sugar. (very ingenious, this will thicken the meringue, easier to work with) Seriously, the sugar needs to be reduced. I have let my family and friends and him tasted it. They all agree that it's a bit too sweet for them, even with the sweet tooth, it is a bit too much. I would strongly suggest anyone who is following the recipe, cut down on the sugar if you are not very fond of super-sweetness. Lastly, I put in the vinegar + food colouring mixture. Honestly, the colour wasn't dark enough, as meringue, they fade a lot when they are in the oven.

Meringue with firm peaks. Colour not clear enough, imo! *whimpers* 

 I just felt obliged to add in some flavours into the meringue itself, so I bought the yam flavouring and added into it. this is totally optional. If you have lavender oil, it is even better, I guess? I have not tried it. I apologize. =P 

Anyway, this is how it looks when it's done. Cute pointy lil' peaks! =D 

NOW, the most interesting part. BEAUTIFYING!

I did not expect the pavlovas in the recipe to be super minute. The last pavlova I made was the size of a humongous cake. I tried to separate the meringue into 5 parts, and piped them onto the silicon pads. I had to separate them into 2 baking sheets/trays. One more sad thing about it is that, my precious oven is small, too. I had to use like at least 4 HOURS to bake these 2 trays of pavlovas. *dies* 

Then I moved on to making the "two sloping hills with a valley in the middle", extracted from "Sweet Alchemy: Dessert Magic" page 77. I guess such techniques require lots of training. The things that are wrong about MY pavlovas are:- 

1. Size, too huge for a spoon, to make the 2 hills and a valley. Not possible to just place a quenelle of chantilly on the pavlova and look elegant! =[
2. Height, too high, pavlovas are delicate baked meringue, making it too high will only make it collapse when berries and chantilly are added on top of it.

BABIES IN THE OVEN! *cheers*

After an hour in the oven and rotating it 180 degrees and another 45 minutes in the oven, the pavlovas were done! (at least 3 of them were, that time) *break time* Another 2 hours, all of them were done by then. I just kept them in sealed containers until the next day.

Solely because I could not whip the cream and garnish all the pavlovas with raspberries and lychees and keep them in the refrigerator, waiting to be eaten by human mouths, because that would only create mushy pavlovas, and no one likes mushy pavlovas. I only whip the chantilly when human mouths decided that they wanted to eat them. 

So far, 3 of the pavlovas have already been eaten and people have given their comments to me! =D Take a look at it: 

My third pavlova, sprinkled a bit of poppy seeds on it. 

PS: I made some sweet butter when I was trying to whip some cream! *sadface* Interested? *smirks*

Taste : 8/10 (given by him)

Looks: 6/10 (could have been better, would look better with a more vibrant colour and with the size and the lack of crytalised rose petal)

All scores are based on the similarity of my attempt to duplicate the original creation by Yigit Pura. Feel free to leave your comments! XOXO