Easy Pavlova Recipe with Claire Saffitz | Dessert Person

hi everyone I'm Claire saffitz welcome to my home kitchen today I'm showing you a dessert that is Beloved the world around it is the Pavlova the origins are kind of disputed some say it's Australian some say it's from New Zealand it has this mering base and this passion fruit topping so it's a mering dessert and a fruit dessert which means it's kind of one of my favorites total crowd-pleaser and really perfect for the [Music] holidays [Music] I've made so many pavalova before because it's it is kind of a recipe but it's also kind of like a category of dish in a way the classic is passion fruit and I want to give a shout out to my friend Emily who came to visit for a weekend and brought me a shipment of the most incredible passion fruit and we have just been enjoying them like eating them plain with a little sugar stirred into the pulp just so good so I I have feel like I had to make papova because I have passion fruit so I'm making the classic but it is really a kind of fruit dessert where it's like you could do any fruit topping I do think that passion fruit is the best it comes together pretty easily not that many ingredients the main thing to think about is that the mering has to bake for a couple hours to really dry out but that's really it starting with the mering we have egg whites granulated sugar powdered sugar a little salt some vanilla extract and a little cream of tartar for the whipped cream I have just heavy cream and a little creme fresh that adds some density then for the passion fruit topping I have fresh passion fruit and a little agab to sweeten it I have an all-purpose meringue in what's for dessert and that's basically what I'm making and showing you I am making it in a stand mixer because it's just so much more hands-off and faster but the instructions in the book are for with a hand mixer so I'm using a stand mixer whatever kind of mixer you have is what you can use I also decided that I was going to bake the mering in a spring form pan it makes it really cake-like and to me feels like a little bit more kind of Celebration focused the kind of mering that I'm making today for pavalova is a kind of marshmallowy mering the mering bakes at a super low temp it doesn't even really bake it more kind of dehydrates and what happens is you get this really crispy light dissolve in your mouth shell around the outside and the center is soft like a marshmallow for that style of mering I have a very specific proportion of sugar that I'm mixing into the egg whites and I'm using a combination of granulated sugar and confectioner sugar and that's really important that tends to make a super stable like really dense really voluminous mering I guess dense and voluminous are kind of opposing ideas but it's both somehow I'm going to start with my egg whites in my mixer I washed the mixer Bowl earlier today I made sure it was really clean what you don't want is any like residue of butter or any fat in the bowl the egg whites are room temp it's not like make or break but they will whip a lot more easily if they're room temp So to that I'm going to add a little bit of salt salt helps the egg whites to whip up so about a/ teaspoon of salt I'm going to add about 1/4 teaspoon of cream of tartar cream of tartar is a is a form of acid you can use like a/ teaspoon of lemon juice or vinegar that will be fine but the acid is sort of stabilizing for the egg whites the sugar dissolves into the egg whites and the whole thing whips into a foam and you get like all these like millions of little air bubbles and what we want to do is help the egg whites to like hold on to that air so these are all kind of stabilizing ingredients I'm going to turn the mixer on medium low and at first I just want the beater attachment to break up the egg whites when you crack an egg you'll notice like the egg white kind of holds together and then you'll have some kind of more watery parts of the egg white so just want to break everything up to get it more liquid the egg whites are not only broken up but they're starting to get really like foamy and opaque and white and gaining in volume so that's when we want to start adding the granulated sugar the granulated sugar goes in first this is is a cup I'm going to sprinkle it in and just let it kind of slowly Cascade into the bowl and that's because egg whites are mostly water and whipping the sugar slowly into the egg whites will dissolve the sugar that's what you want and I'm whipping on medium because a slightly slower mix is better for mering partly because it gives the sugar a little bit more time to dissolve and partly because it just helps to make it more stable that's actually technically on medium now okay I just added all the sugar the mixture is still on medium and I basically want to let this continue to whip I can increase the speed a little bit to help it along but this is going to whip up into a super glossy like really voluminous mering the egg whites started off really at the sort of bottom they barely even came up to the bottom of the Whisk in The Mixing Bowl they're now halfway up the Whisk and by the time the mering is done it's going to be you know at least 3/4 the way covering the width so that's how much it gains in volume no kidding no good listening sort of okay so the mering I can see it's getting even bigger it's starting to be pretty glossy and it's starting to also really sharply hold the marks from the Whisk as it goes through okay so I'm going to go ahead and show you what the texture looks like this is a firm Peak so see those little like pointy pieces of mering off the top of the Whisk or at firm Peaks so adding confectioner sugar at this stage further stabilizes it and because it's so finely ground it dissolves really quickly so we can add it at this later stage so I have a Sie just because sometimes confectional sugar is very lumpy and I'm going to just sift this over the mering so the Whisk goes back on and at first I'm going to put the mixer on the lowest setting just to incorporate you don't want like the sugar to fly everywhere it actually thins out the texture of the mering so it'll become a little bit looser and you lose that stiff peak so now what I want to do is increase his speed and I'm going to beat it again until I get back to that firm Peak and that's going to give me like the shiniest densest but most voluminous Fring so medium high all right let's give it a test it's looking so good think we're back at a firm Peak Yep looks so good it's like a bird's Peak it's like standing straight up so now I'm going to add just a teaspoon of vanilla extract mering doesn't really have any flavor it's just all texture and I love it but like a little vanilla goes a long way so I'm just going to beat that in briefly did you put the paste in you could put paste for sure now I'm going to get this out of the bowl and into my pan it looks so good so I'm baking it in the spring form pan and I prepared my pan already so I have a round of parchment paper on the bottom and some strips all the way around the sides I greased the pan with a little bit of oil I just rubbed it across the surfaces with my hand and I did that so that the parchment sticks to the pan but I didn't Grease the parchment it doesn't need any grease in fact you don't want grease because one of one thing that destabilizes mering is fat so you don't really want it to come into contact with that the other thing that destabilizes Maring is time so you know if if you had to like leave and go make a phone call or something and come back in 5 minutes that's okay but you just don't really want to like let it sit here one thing I want to try to avoid because I have this like super light mering that really holds its shape it's really easy to create air pockets I want to try to eliminate any big air pockets in here so I'm going to just dollop in the mering in this focusing kind of on the center of the pan so you can see how nice and stiff it is it's just incredible it's like a miracle so that's 2/3 of the mixture and now what I want to do is just kind of slowly work it to the sides of the pan this is again is just for eliminating big air pockets but like look at how beautiful it looks I love it so I'm just spreading this around making sure that it's covering everywhere and now I'm going to scrape the rest on top oh my gosh it looks so good I love it it's just like fun to play with actually so now that I have everything in the pan now is like the really fun part because I'm going to create lots of big divots and swooshes and swirls throughout the mering what I want to do is create pockets where the cream can kind of fill in and the merang is thinner in some parts and thicker in some parts that's how I really get a lot of textural variation as it bakes in the pan it's covered like on most of its sides except for the surface so it does bake for quite a long time because you need the mering to really dry out so I have my oven preh hited to 200 that's important 200's super low so I'm just taking the spoon I have a big spoon here and I'm just making like little craters in the surface all over and one thing about mering because there's all that air in there when it goes into a warm oven those all those like millions of little air bubbles expand slightly so the whole thing will puff up but what also happens is it loses some of the definition that you see like in its raw state so just know that so sometimes I like we'll say like make the divots deeper than you think they need to be because you'll lose some of that over time so this is going to go into my oven again I'm at 200 the merine doesn't so much bake as it justes just like dries out and I'll show you how to test for when it's done but it will take upward W of 2 hours especially in the pan I would say more like 2 to 2 and a half I baked mine really late last night and I pulled it out it probably could have gone a little longer I pulled it out at like 2 hours 15 minutes passion fruit have incredible acidity but also so much complexity and flavor and like so tropical and perfumed they're incredible they are kind of purplish brownish and a sign of ripeness is that they're super wrinkled so these have been sitting on the counter for half a week and they just keep getting more and more wrinkled day by day so I'm definitely ready to cut them open inside is this kind of very loose web of seeds and Pulp the passion fruit seeds are incredible they pop when you chew them it's like really satisfying to eat it's really hard to find passion fruit in New York but if you like you live in Southern California or a tropical or subtropical climate maybe it's less of a special thing but to me this is just like the ultimate luxury so I'm going to basically just sco scoop out the seeds and Pulp into a bowl any fruit is really great on pavalova mated berries strawberries blackberries you could do a blueberry pavalova mango would be really really good maybe like give it a quick sauté because this is kind of the season for more tropical things if it was like cooked just a little bit you could do like an incredible pineapple version so sometimes what happens is you get some little bits of stringiness that's that are kind of holding the seeds together I take these out then I'm going to sweeten it with a little bit of agab so it's just going to kind of take the edge off of the passion fruit which are Super sour but everything else is going to be pretty sweet so I want to just very lightly sweeten it so I have about I would say 3/4 of a cup here I'm going to start with maybe about a tablespoon of agave but this part is largely to taste and I still want it to be tart I really still want that sourness that's what's great about passion fruit I like Agave because it's a liquid sweetener it doesn't really need to dissolve it just incorporates super easily let me give a little taste I me it's good in two large quantities sugar Dulles flavor and you don't even know what you're eating but in small quantities it is such an effective flavor enhancer it's like this now tastes more passion fruity it doesn't taste noticeably sweet it just kind of takes that sour edge off and makes it really shine it's like super bright this is actually going to go in the fridge and it can just hang out until my mering is [Music] done so my timer says that this mering has been in for 2 hours and 17 minutes I'm going to go ahead and check it so I know that it's done because it's matte all over and when I press in some of the valleys of the mering I feel like a certain thickness of shell and then underneath is kind of soft bouncy material so that's how you know it's done another test is that if you try to sort of pull away a little bit of parchment it should release this is just going to cool now and because it didn't bake that hot it doesn't take that long to cool so I have all of my components for Pavlova well almost I have my topping my mering which looks so beautiful on this plate I'm now like very into the kind of making it in a mold and the last thing is to whip my cream so you can just go straight whipped cream but the meringa is already so light and then you add this light whipped cream to it that I actually like a little added density to the cream so I'm going to add some creme fresh it also adds a little bit of Tang which goes well with the passion fruit and furthermore it get makes it a little not like it makes it Savory but it just makes it decidedly unsweet which is a nice foil against the mering which has a ton of sugar so I'm going to do about a cup maybe more like 3/4 of a cup of heavy cream just kind of eyeballing it and about a half a cup of crem fresh if you don't have crem fresh you can use sour cream that works really well too I actually love the mixture I love like a little sour cream and whipped cream it's so good oops just a dash of vanilla maybe not even a teaspoon maybe a half teaspoon so obviously I used the St mixer for whipping the mering I could use it again to whip the cream but the Bowl's dirty I don't feel like washing it and I already put the mixer away so I'm just going to do this by hand anytime you have under like two cups of cream it's doable bowl by hand make sure you have a nice large bowl so I'm just going to keep whipping this and eventually will start to thicken and I want to go until I have kind of soft peaks I'm not going to whip it to like a super firm cream adding the Crum fresh it makes like you're adding additional fat so it's making the cream whip faster and it's also then stabilizing it once it's already whipped so when you Whi a soft PE peeks with a little bit of creme fresh it'll kind of set at that texture and it like won't fall or deflate or kind of like run like sometimes just state with cream does make sure you have a nice wide Bowl cuz sometimes it has a tendency to Splatter before it really starts to thicken so this is basically softly whipped the cream holds its shape in like a little Mound but it doesn't hold a peak quick note you really want to do this only before serving because there's all this liquid in the cream and when it hits that merang which has all that sugar in it it's going to kind of start to dissolve it I'm not saying you couldn't do this like if you having dinner before you sat down to dinner and then you know 30 minutes later you're serving dessert you just don't want to do it like hours ahead although there is something great that you get in that kind of dissolving texture which is why eaten messes so good with that same spoon as before just kind of spreading it around so now I'm going to top it and again this especially you want to do right before serving so I'm just going to go a couple spoonfuls all over okay this looks so bright so excited to eat [Music] it I think the whole thing looks so beautiful I'm really happy with how it turned out I like how it kind of looks like a cake slicing it is going to be a little difficult just because that mering just kind of breaks and like falls apart when wherever it wants to so I'm going to give it a try I think using a serrated knife is probably going to help me the most keep in mind I still have that parchment under there because that thing was just never coming loose so keep that in mind when you're serving the whole thing is so soft wor better than I thought it would a little extra on top frankly this merine could have cooked more it's a little wet in the center but still pretty nice and marshmallowy all the way through it's really just like from there over and of course crispy on the outside which is what you want the pop from the Pion fruit seeds against everything so good you get like an actual crunch in there and a dessert that otherwise can be pretty soft I really like the creme fresh it gives it a richness that I think it wouldn't have otherwise cuz like there's not really fat in here otherwise you just have egg whites and sugar and then your fruit so like that really rich kind of dense thick cream is so good I feel like this is really showstopping perfect for a New Year celebration or any kind of like wintertime treat you could really make it with any kind of fruit that you like and I think it's like relatively low effort obviously spends a couple hours in the oven but other than that not so complicated to put together and not a long ingredient list so happy I made it and thank you so much for watching don't forget to like And subscribe and happy New [Music] Year [Music]

Channel: Claire Saffitz x Dessert Person

Views: 203,865

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Id: jHkSIqm_Occ

Length: 17min 6sec (1026 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 21 2023