Fruit Filled Pavlova

A fruit and cream filled pavlova is a simple stunning dessert which always make an impressive looking centrepiece.   I love the strength of the reds in the strawberries, and raspberries but I could imagine this looking equally tempting with golden fruit colours like maybe toffee coloured caramelised pears with poached peaches and apricots.

Making your pavlova mixture requires an electric mixer as there’s a lot of whipping to be done to produce silky stiffly beaten egg whites combined with caster sugar.  That’s it imagine, just two ingredients whipped together and then cooked slowly to produce a crispy outer bite that melds to a fluffy inner mallowy filling.
The blue and red tray liners above are reusable silicon that I’ve been finding extremely useful as I’m the type that grabs the roll of baking paper and tears it  by hand rather than taking the time to find the scissors which usually ends up in a lot of wasted paper.
You could make your meringue bases the evening before a special event and store them somewhere cool and dry overnight to be freshly filled on the day.  This is a fail safe dessert that is a true crowd-pleaser.

I hope you have an excuse to try this out soon and see how simple it is for yourself.

You will need:
6 egg whites
300g caster sugar
pinch salt
For Filling:
Cream, Strawberries, Dark Chocolate
Method:
Line two baking trays with baking paper or silicon liners
Preheat fan oven to 150
Whisk the egg whites in an electric mixer on a medium setting until they begin to stiffen up
Gradually add in the caster sugar and salt and beat on a high-speed for around 8 minutes until it really stiffens up and looks shiny and white
Divide the mixture onto the two baking trays and smooth it out into rounds.  I kept one  smooth and then used the spatula to pull up peaks on the second which adds an interesting look and texture to the top half of the pavlova.
Cook in the oven for 1 hour.
Remove from oven and leave to cool on the trays.
When cooled carefully assemble the pavlova by filling the centre with cream and fruit and melted chocolate and topping with some fruit and melted chocolate.
Emjoy!
‘Til next time, Sheila