Strawberry Pavlova

Strawberry Pavlova….

My daughter’s first recipe!
She entered this in her 4H cooking competition this week, and placed 3rd. I don’t know much about 4H, but it is very big in our area. She is a 4th grader, and apparently, they competed against 6 or 7 other schools, going up to 6th grade. Last night she told me the food category competed against 8th graders, but I’d have to check with her teacher about that. Pretty awesome!

I told her if I didn’t take pictures of her making it, everyone would think I made it; she agreed. She even tried to get me to make it! As if. Now, I think we might be having this more often in our house!

 

Strawberry Pavlova

• 3 egg whites
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• Zest of half a small orange
• 1 ¼ cups heavy whipping cream
• ½ cup confectioners sugar
• 1 pint fresh strawberries

 

 

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F. Line a sheet with parchment paper.  Draw a 9 inch circle on the parchment. 

In a large bowl, beat egg whites on h igh speed  until soft peaks form.  Add ¾ cup of the sugar gradually, while continuing to whip.  Make sure sugar is completely dissolved. Mix together the remaining ¼ cup sugar with the cornstarch, lightly fold into meringue with lemon juice.

Spread a layer of meringue to fit circle on parchment, approximately ¼ inch thick.  With remainder of mixture, pipe or spoon swirls around the edges to form a shallow bowl shape.

Bake at 300 degrees F for 1 hour.  Turn of oven, but leave meringue in oven for an additional 30 minutes.  When cool, the meringue should be hard on the outside, and slightly moist on the inside.

In a large bowl, combine the cream and a half cup of confectioner’s sugar, and whip until thickened.  Decorate with fruit of your choice, strawberries are excellent.

The round cake is the one she made, the oval is the one I made the next morning.

**I hope to replace this picture of my cake with a picture of her cake as soon as her teacher sends me one. I was under the impression that this was for her class so I had prepared to have her make two cakes, but once she cleared that up and said that there was only 1 person eating the cake (the judge), and then her teacher, her partner and herself, I still had the stuff to make the second cake so I made it the next morning. Early. Good thing, because she had to throw the cake away. Meringue doesn’t last long under whipped cream and strawberries, which fortunately she already understands. Making strawberry shortcake is one of her favorite desserts. A few years ago I showed her how to fix her own strawberries and whipped cream. The most important part, I explained, was to give the sugar time to pull the juice out of the strawberries.

Maybe that is why she picked this dessert, because it is one of the few desserts she really understands.