Vanilla Pavlova

When a pavlova is made perfectly, it's a thing of beauty. And I'm going to share with you my vanilla pavlova. So I add vanilla in the actual meringues, and I also add vanilla in my cream later on, so you really get that lovely aroma. Vanilla is one of the world's most popular flavours, so let's celebrate it. Now, let's start with our egg whites. You're going to need five egg whites. Now, what I do when I'm making a mayonnaise or a custard is not throw out these egg whites that you don't need for those recipes. Pop that in the fridge to defrost overnight, and I tell you what, these make the best pavlovas. So after they've been defrosted, bring them to room temperature, into the bowl of a mixer, and then we're going to start whisking this. So you want this to become quite frothy, double in size, and little by little, I'm going to add my sugar, followed by a little bit of white vinegar. And then I'm going to add my vanilla bean paste. I love to use vanilla bean paste for this because you're going to see the speckles of vanilla beans throughout the whole pavlova. Alright, our meringues have been perfectly whipped. Let's place this onto a tray. I've just traced a 20 centimetre circle onto some baking paper, and then we'll just pop all of our meringue into the centre. Now, we don't want to lose any air because as soon as this goes into the oven, it's not going to rise, so you want to form it into that perfect pavlova shape now. So not too flat, but at the same time, we want it to be quite even, so I'll just spread that out. Look how good that looks. And I love how there's a little tint there from that vanilla that we added. This now goes into the oven, and it's going to cook for about one and a half to two hours at 120 degrees, so nice and low. And while this is cooking in the oven, I can prepare my cream. Perfectly whipped cream with some more vanilla bean paste and simple fruits for my pavlova. I like blueberries, kiwi and passion fruit. The meringues come out of the oven. It's crispy on the outside, spongy in the centre. I've got some cream here. I've just whipped up some sour cream with a little bit of thickened cream, and then I like to add some more vanilla bean paste, so about a teaspoon, and just gently fold it in. Fantastic. Now we can top our pavlova with our vanilla cream, and you have to be generous with this vanilla cream. So pile it all in the centre, and then just with your spatula, just spread it out. And this is where you get extra hype by adding lots of cream to the top and the fruits. So the fruits, we've got golden kiwis, and we've also got the classic green kiwis. We'll just pop that in the centre. Of course, you could add some strawberries, any berry you like. I'm gonna stick to blueberries for this one, and we'll just pop them on top. Look how big these blueberries are. They look fantastic, don't they? And finally, you can't have a pavlova without some passion fruit. So a drizzle of passion fruit, fresh pulp over the top, a crispy meringue base, fluffy cream, and lots of fruit on top. I never get tired of making a pavlova, and I certainly never get tired of eating it.