My vacherin like pavlova recipe

Hi everyone, 

I’d like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas. Hope you have all well behaved and that Santa brought you what you asked for 🙂 

As some of you may know, in France people usually serve a Christmas log to close a traditional dinner made with seafood, poultry, smoked salmon and/or foie gras. As we live abroad, we usually celebrate Christmas only the four of us. I decided that in contrast with previous years, we will not have Christmas log for days. So I decided to make a small pavlova instead and it was just perfect. I just added some vanilla ice cream which makes it look like a vacherin, one of my husband’s favorite dessert. A vacherin is a pavlova with ice cream, as simple as that. If you are looking for a festive, easy and beautiful dessert, search no more. 

Fresh, sweet, light, crunchy, aerated pavlova

Ingredients:

For the meringues:

• 3 egg whites
• granulated sugar – same weight as egg whites
• confectioner sugar – same weight as egg whites
• a few drops of lemon juice
• 1 tsp of rose water

• 250 ml heavy cream 
• 125 g of mascarpone
• 3 tbsp – leveled – confectioner sugar
• 30 g of white chocolate – used Ivoire from Valrhona

Mise en place before assembling

1. Sieve the confectioner sugar in a large bowl 
2. Add the egg whites in a mixer and the lemon juice. Mix at high speed until the egg whites start to foam and hold shape, add the granulated sugar at three times while still mixing. 
3. Add the rose water or any flavor of your preference and keep mixing for a good 10 mn. 
4. Then add the confectioner sugar at once and gently stir in with a silicone spatula. 
5. Transfer into a piping bag and form the shapes you like on a baking sheet. I personally used 2 piping tips (Wilton #12 and #199); the #12 to shape 2 circles of 14 cm wide that will serve as the bottom layer – use the back of a teaspoon to dig the centre so you can add the ice cream later – and the #199 to shape the top layer of 14 cm wide as well.   The size was perfect for four people. And I used up the remaining mixture to make small individual meringues 
6. Dry the meringues at 130°/150°C – normally meringues are to be dried up at 100°C but I have a gas oven that always turns off at less than 150°C so annoying – for 2 to 3 hours.

While the meringues are drying in the oven, time to prepare the whipped cream:

1. Melt the white chocolate au bain-marie with 50 g of heavy cream. 
2. Keep the remaining heavy cream in the freezer 
3. Transfer the mascarpone and the confectioner sugar in a mixer and combine well 
4. Slowly pour the melted chocolate while still mixing 
5. Then take the heavy cream out of the freezer and transfer it into the mixing bowl and whisk at high speed until firm peaks – for about a minute or two but do not overmix
6. Transfer the whipped cream in a salad bowl and cover and let it sit in the fridge. It will hold, do not worry. This whipped cream recipe is also perfect to cover sponge cake. It’s aerated, light but has great coverage ) not speaking of foundation. 

Halfway done

Assembling: 

1. Assemble the pavlova right before serving
2. Add some vanilla ice cream in the centre of the bottom circle
3. Add some whipped cream on the ice cream 
4. Top with some fresh fruits – I used raspberries and some mint leaves/rosemary sprigs
5. Finally, add the top circle of meringue and add more decorations as you like 
6. Serve straight away and enjoy!!  

I hope you’ll give it a try. Let me know in the comment if you do.