I looove pavlova. It is common at social events and birthday parties in New Zealand. Most women take some pride in baking a pav but pre-made ones are available in all of the supermarkets. Covered with whipped cream and strawberries I cannot think of anything more divine.
Anyone care to enlighten those of us on the top half of the globe as to just what pavlova is?
Not to mention Phar Lap!!
This seems the appropriate place for my ongoing campaign…
It’s a blardy kiwiFRUIT dammit!! :mad::mad:
You don’t like sliced Kiwis on your pav? They do taste better than sliced Aussies.
If you buy them, are they dry inside? Or mushy like they should be?
I’m glad they’re not that ubiquitous in the UK (and certainly not in the Netherlands), that way I can impress people with the easiest pud ever and they think I’m a genius. Ha! 
I did one recently with pomegranate and pistachios, the hot pink and green really popped. It looked very pretty, though the pistachio was a little too delicate. I might try to make the pavlova itself with pistachio paste, see if that works (might be too greasy, but I managed with hazelnuts). I’ve also done rose water and rose petals+fruit on top. You can do endless variations, really.
Me too - in fact, on more than one occasion, I’ve been asked to do the making of the Pavlova at the dinner table as a performance.
I have a couple of tricks and variations for my version of Pavlova (purists, please look away now):
I make two large, flattish but slightly concave meringue discs
I prepare all of my fruit in advance, comprising:
Orange segments (peeled by slicing them out of the whole peeled orange)
Kiwi slices (peel kiwi with a teaspoon - it’s the easiest way)
Strawberry slices
Blueberries
Physalis (cape gooseberries) with the papery cases torn open and twirled back like the flights of a dart.
Passionfruit sauce (a carton of passionfruit juice, thickened with cornstarch, chilled and stored in a squirty bottle)
Sweet vanilla sabayon (=custard, chilled, made from the separated egg yolks)
Chantilly cream
Then at the table, I assemble thus:
Lay down one of the meringues
Spread the sabayon
Arrange the orange slices (saving a few for decoration)
Dress with passionfruit sauce
Add the second meringue
Add the cream
Artfully arrange the kiwi, strawberries, blueberries
Do a chef-y zigzag lattice of passionfruit sauce across the top
Add the remaining orange wedges and cape gooseberries as a garnish
I’d say “chewy” rather than “mushy” - I make my own plain, but I buy the chocolate-coffee ones and that’s how I’d characterise them.
Haven’t had one for years. They aren’t as popular as they were in the 70’s, but those who were in their 20’s 30’s in the 70’s still break em out at family gigs.
I’m quite partial to a slice of Pav given the chance but ceebs making one myself.
The best pavlova topping is Peppermint Crisp - Wikipedia.
I first encountered pavolvas at Anna’s Pavlova Parlor in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the late 1970s, where they served them with your choice of fruit. I’d never heard of them before. Nor, to be honest, have I encountered them since, and I doubt if they’re widely known here in the States. Anna’s is long gone, but a quick internet search shows that there are several restaurants in Boston and Cambridge that serve them.
This thread needs a recipe or two.
My wife has a really simple pavlova recipe that has you weigh the eggs in their shell, and then use that much sugar. If she is making a chocolate pavlova she uses some coffee in the mix (which I don’t like, so she sometimes doesn’t add it). Some people bill this as a cappuccino pavlova.
She then uses the yolks to make a rich chocolate sauce (I guess more a chocolate custard) to pour over the pav. That is yummy.
But I grew up with a traditional kiwi (nation) pav with cream and fruit:
kiwifruit (siding with bengangmo),
banana,
passionfruit,
cape gooseberry,
peach,
nectarine,
mandarin segments
and combinations thereof.
Pav was the very first Australian food I ever had.
It was followed by a lamington.
I went to my brother’s wedding in Sydney two months ago (his bride is from there). Instead of having a wedding cake, they had a wedding pavlova. First time I’d had it, but I loved it!
Now I want a piece of pavlova.
I had a lamington the other day. I’d forgotten how good they are. I hate, *hate, *HATE, shredded coconut. Lamingtons are so good I like them even though they are covered in shredded coconut. They are that good.
Here you go mate, enjoy.
Pav’s are still around – and much easier now that the supermarket always sells pav. shells.
But the lamington as a cultural icon is almost extinct. Lamingtons used to be a tarted-up version of a basic Aus recipe: A sponge cake (about as exciting as it sounds) coated in chocolate, coated in shredded coconut. The sponge cake is still one of the basic common catagories of show competition (agricultural fair), but home baking is down.
Because this is so basic, simple, and common, in the 60’s parent groups used to raise money by cooking vast amounts of sponge cake, coating and selling it. This was so common it had it’s own name: a Lamington Drive. In the Late 70’s, a Lamington drive was re-selling a cheap commercial product, and then the practice dissappeared into history.