Lemon Blueberry Pavlova - Easy Lemon Meringue - Food Wishes

[Music] hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with lemon blueberry pavlova that's right my favorite way to enjoy lemon meringue is not with a pie it is with pavlova where we're going to enjoy all the same taste and textures except instead of a soggy crust our soft luxurious meringue is going to be covered with a stunningly beautiful crispy crunchy shell and as if that wasn't enough we will also be garnishing with fresh blueberries and a homemade blueberry sauce and the first thing we'll do before we really get started is go ahead and cut up our butter and set that aside and please use something good all right good people don't use bad butter and then next up we're gonna go ahead and separate four large eggs which i will show you one of and today i'll be using the shell to shell method and as usual whenever i film this the white never wants to separate from the yolk which as i like to remind people is just because the eggs are really fresh so that is a good thing but anyway we are going to want to end up with four yolks in one bowl and four whites in the other and if those little white things on the yolk bother you you can pull those off and we're actually going to work with the yolks first but don't refrigerate the whites just cover them and leave them on the countertop since those are gonna whip up a lot better at room temp and then what we'll do to start the lemon filling is take our four yolks and add some freshly grated lemon zest okay at least two lemons worth and above and beyond a little bit of juice that is where most of the lemon flavor is going to come from and then to that we will add a small pinch of salt followed by a slightly larger pinch of sugar and then last but not least our freshly squeezed lemon juice which of course you've squeezed after zesting the lemons and that's it we'll take a whisk and give this a thorough mix before heading to the stove where we're going to place our bowl over some barely simmering water okay so our heat's on low and we only have like an inch or two of water in there as we don't want the water high enough to touch the bottom of the bowl and what we'll do is stir that pretty much constantly for the next 10 minutes or so or until it gets very hot to the touch and thickens up enough to coat the back of a spoon oh by the way the reason we want to switch to a rubber spatula or spoon here is so we don't aerate this mixture okay i made this wrong for years and i always used a whisk but you end up incorporating so many air bubbles you just don't get the same texture so a spatula here is definitely the way to go and what we're making here is basically called a lemon curd although this is not going to be quite as firm and dense as those traditionally are okay this is going to be more like a very very thick sauce so instead of using more yolks and cooking this until it really gets thick like i said we're just going to stir this until it gets very hot to the touch sort of like bath water that you're thinking might be too hot to get into and also will thicken up enough to coat the back of a spoon which is hard to see on one of these silicone spoonulas but you can see how it's coating the sides of the bowl and then what we'll do once we think our mixture is thickened up enough let's go ahead and stir in our chunks of butter three or four at a time and we will wait till each addition is pretty much melted before adding the next and i'm not going to show all the additions because they all pretty much looked exactly the same and then what we'll do once the last of our butter has been incorporated is remove that from the heat and we'll pour it into some kind of bowl to cool and yes if you want you could pass this through a strainer just in case you think you have some chunks of cooked egg yolk or like those little weird white things that were stuck to the yolks but mine looked perfectly smooth so i'm not going to bother but anyway that'll be up to you guys i mean you are after all the thundering herd of what's basically a soft lemon curd and even though this looks very thin now once we wrap this and pop it in the fridge which is what we're gonna do next as you'll see it's gonna thicken up beautifully and yes we do want to push that plastic straight down on the surface so it doesn't develop a skin all right no one's ever been eating lemon curd and said this is good but i wish it had more skin okay so we'll wrap that up as shown and we'll pop that in the fridge and chill it completely before we use it and at this point we can move on to making the actual pavlova which we'll start by lightly oiling a silicone baking mat on top of a sheet pan since meringue is so sticky it will even stick to something that's nonstick and then before we start whipping our whites we will want to stir our cornstarch whereas the people that i steal these recipes from call it corn flour into our white sugar and we'll just give that a quick mix and set it aside and once that's out we can go ahead and grab our room temperature egg whites and we will add an optional pinch of cream of tartar which is just an acidic powder that helps stabilize the whites and if you don't have it no big deal this will still work and then speaking of acid we will also add a little bit of lemon juice as well as a little touch of real pure vanilla extract and then what we'll do is take our biggest bolonius whisk and we will whip these whites for a few minutes until very very soft peaks form and i'm talking very very very soft ideally something that looks like this and once we've reached this stage we can start whisking in our sugar mixture a couple tablespoons at a time okay so we'll add some in we'll whisk it for about a minute or until we think it's been incorporated and we'll keep doing that until it's gone and yes of course if you want you can use an electric mixer but i really do think you get a much better meringue if you do it by hand although the big stand mixers will do a good job but why not burn off a few calories and sneak in a little bit of an aerobic workout and then as far as the end game goes here once all the sugar's been incorporated we are going to want to whisk this until relatively stiff peaks form are not super super stiff since an over whip meringue can actually get kind of dry and grainy but these whites must be firm enough to hold their shape and you know you've probably gone far enough when your meringue will hold some nice sharp lines alright you see those so to me that is absolutely perfect and that's it once our meringue is set we can go ahead and transfer that onto our baking sheet by either using a spoon or a piping bag and what we want to do is place nice big dollops in a ring to form a circle about eight or nine inches across and after realizing my first two were kind of small i switched to using two spoons so i could get a little more on there a little faster and then what we'll do once we've gone all the way around the outside around the outside around the outside is that we'll fill in the middle with at least an inch of meringue making sure it's attached to and touching all the dollops and then what we'll do once we have that center filled in is go around the outside again adding extra dollops to the top of our dollops oh yeah we're talking double dollops so that we really build up that outside ring around the edge and then later on we'll have a beautiful depression in the middle in which to add our lemon curd and blueberries and besides building up that outside ring of meringue as high as we can i'm also at the same time kind of doing a little swirl design on the top of each peak and like i said if you want it really fancy you can use a piping bag but as you'll see this rustic method actually looks really really nice once it's baked so don't stress out too much and that's it once we're happy with our design this is ready to transfer into the center of a 250 degree oven for exactly one hour but once the timer rings we do not remove it from the oven okay we definitely turn off the oven but what we'll do is crack the door and just let it cool down completely in the oven and by letting it dry out and cool slowly we're going to make sure we end up with a beautifully crispy and crunchy shell so just leave it sitting in your oven like this until it's cooled completely and then while that cools we can move on to make our fresh blueberry sauce which could not be simpler since all we're going to do is take some fresh blueberries add a couple spoons of sugar and a splash of cold fresh water and we will bring that up to a simmer on medium heat and simply cook it stirring occasionally for about 10 minutes or so or until those blueberries collapse and the liquid thickens okay what we're looking for is something that resembles this and believe it or not that's it we will simply pull that off the heat and pass that through a fine mesh strainer using a combination of stirring and pressing with the back of the spoon and if you don't mind i'm going to fast forward to the end of that process so i can show you that once we're done you should have a beautiful blueberry sauce that looks like this and while this dessert would be beautiful with just fresh blueberries i think being able to spoon this over also makes it extra special so we'll go ahead and pop that in the fridge so it's nice and cold before we use it and that's it once that's set we can finally see what our fully cooled meringue looks like which to me looks pretty darn good okay we're always going to lose some definition as this puffs up a little bit when it bakes but in general it's going to hold that shape pretty well and then what we'll do next is somehow transfer this onto a serving plate or platter but first we have to make sure it's not stuck onto our baking mat which we can do by lifting it up and kind of peeling but that's a little dangerous since it can kind of crack in half so what i do is usually go around with a spatula making sure it's loosened all the way around and right here i want to try to pick it up and it started to crack and i got scared so i grabbed a second spatula at a plate safe and i was able to transfer it onto a plate and by the way you're always going to get some cracks which is not only fine but actually look pretty cool we're basically just trying to avoid major cracks where huge chunks fall off oh and speaking of cracks not necessarily being whack i'm actually going to take a spoon and crack the center a little bit to make sure we have a nice spacious well for our lemon filling and since right underneath that crispy crunchy shell is soft sticky meringue if you do get some major chunks to break off you can just sort of push them and stick them back on and then once we're happy with our base we will go fetch our now fully cool lemon curd filling and we'll go ahead and fill in the center and in a perfect world this is going to be soft enough to kind of flow and spread easily but at the same time thick enough so it doesn't just run out between the cracks and the meringue although having said that if yours came out thicker or thinner it's still going to work beautifully but anyway once that middle's been lemoned we'll go ahead and add a whole bunch of fresh blueberries to the top which i was just gonna put only in the center and not on the meringue but after the third blueberry insisted i decided to take a hint and open up the meringue seeding all right when the food's trying to tell you something you want to listen and that's it we'll go ahead and finish up with some of our fresh blueberry sauce which has by now fully chilled and we'll go ahead and drizzle that over our fresh berries and then maybe over some of the meringue for no apparent reason and then once i had that applied using the tip of my spoon and then eventually the tip of a knife i tried to make this straight fire with a little bit of a flame design which sort of kind of worked and then for one final final touch we will add a gratuitous sprig of men's which i think looks nice but if anyone gives you a hard time just tell them you're being ironic and yeah some of our blueberry sauce did run through the cracks on the bottom but that's fine we wanted that to happen allegedly and as i cut out and plate up a piece here i'm going to shut up for a few seconds so you can hear exactly how crispy and crunchy that shell is oh yeah that sounds right and of course once plated we can always spoon over some more blueberries and then we'll go ahead and grab a fork and dig in to as i said earlier what i consider the ultimate in lemon meringue experiences okay this lemon curd filling is so intensely lemony not to mention the most gorgeous lemon color and the way it fuses to that soft sticky marshmallowy center is nothing short of magical and above and beyond the flavor contrast between the sweet and the sour what really makes this so incredible is that contrast in textures between that crispy crunchy outside meringue shell and that soft sticky luxurious marshmallowy center and of course the only way to make already perfect lemon desserts even more perfect in my opinion is by adding a little bit of fresh berries blue or otherwise plus one last contrast which a lot of people wouldn't even consider is a contrast between that meringue which has no fat in it and that beautifully rich butter infused lemon curd which is basically the same reason butter toast works so well but anyway that's it what we're calling lemon blueberry pavlova while it does take a little bit of time to make it is also very simple and easy to pull off and even the most inexperienced bakers will be able to produce something intensely delicious not to mention stunningly gorgeous so for all those reasons and more i really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 295,639

Keywords: Lemon, Blueberry, Pavlova, easy, Easter, recipe, chef, john, food, wishes, cooking

Id: RO2LNiuvPS8

Length: 12min 58sec (778 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 02 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Needs whipped cream !