26 Aug 2013 danstowell   » (Journeyer)

Blackberry pavlova

Over the bank holiday we happened to discover a massive trove of BLACKBERRIES! Now of course I'm not going to tell you the exact location - let's just say it was somewhere in the southern half of the UK ;) and we got a massive haul of lovely blackberries:

Untitled Untitled

So we now have many blackberry-oriented puddings ahead of us. To make the most of the freshly-picked blackberries I wanted to make pavlova with blackberries and blackberry coulis. So Philippa's mum kindly told us the secret to her delicious pavlova. My photography here is amateur but trust us this is delicious:

So here's the recipe. The amounts I've written are for a "small" pavlova to serve two. If you change the amounts you'll probably need to adjust the cooking time.

I've got to say, and I know this sounds poncey, but it's not really worth bothering with shop-bought blackberries. We've had them now and again and they always look nice but there's somehow no flavour to them. (Philippa's mum makes it with shop-bought raspberries and that's good. It's really the blackberries I'm on about here.) So, while it's the season, if you can find some blackberries to pick, then take the opportunity, and make this:

  • For the pavlova:
    • 2 egg whites
    • 4 oz caster sugar
    • 2/3 tsp cornflour
    • 1/3 tsp vanilla essence
    • 2/3 tsp malt vinegar
  • For the rest:
    • 10 oz (285g) blackberries
    • 1 heaped tsp icing sugar
    • Ice cream to serve

Pre-heat the oven to 150C.

First you need to whisk the egg whites almost to stiff peaks. For this, follow all the usual meringue advice: you'll need a spotlessly clean bowl (because oil or alkaline can cause it to collapse), and I add a dab of vinegar to the bowl to be sure. Add the egg whites and then whisk them almost to stiff peaks. Add half of the sugar and whisk it in.

Then mix the other half of the sugar with the cornflour. Sprinkle it over the meringue mix, and do the same with the vanilla and the vinegar. Using a big wooden or plastic spoon, fold everything in, until it's mixed and the brown streaks have disappeared. Take care not to over-fold it or the air will go out of it - better to stop a little too soon than a little too late.

Put a sheet of baking paper on a big baking tray, and pour the mixture onto it, making a rough circle. Level it off with the back of the spoon, so it's maybe an inch thick.

Put this into the pre-heated oven for 40 minutes. Then turn off the oven and leave it to cool, without opening the door. This helps prevent it from cracking. After about 30 minutes, or maybe longer, it's probably OK to open the oven door. Then leave it to cool to room temperature, a good hour or so at least.

[...time passes...]

When you're ready to have your afters, prepare the blackberries and coulis etc - it doesn't take a sec. Rinse the blackberries gently. Put half of them onto the plates you're going to serve them on (pick the best-looking non-squishy ones if you have the patience). The other half, put them in a (mini-)blender with the icing sugar, and whizz them up. Then push this mixture through a sieve and collect the lovely dark purple coulis into a serving jug below.

Serve however you like, but each person will want a slice of the pavlova meringue, a load of the fresh blackberries, a generous drizzle of coulis and a couple of scoops of ice cream.

Syndicated 2013-08-26 14:54:24 (Updated 2013-08-26 15:55:33) from Dan Stowell

Latest blog entries     Older blog entries

New Advogato Features

New HTML Parser: The long-awaited libxml2 based HTML parser code is live. It needs further work but already handles most markup better than the original parser.

Keep up with the latest Advogato features by reading the Advogato status blog.

If you're a C programmer with some spare time, take a look at the mod_virgule project page and help us with one of the tasks on the ToDo list!