Got Egg Whites?-Banoffee Pavlova

I was a bit surprised to find, a year or so ago, that pavlova, as a dessert, wasn’t well-known here in Nova Scotia (well, this bit of it, anyway). We had friends over for an alfresco dinner on the deck, and I thought a light, fruit-filled pavlova would be just the thing as dessert. They had never heard of it!

To step back a bit, a pavlova is basically a meringue (or meringue-like) round, filled with whipped cream and fruit, and was supposed to have been ‘invented’ in the 1920s, in Australia (or maybe New Zealand, there are arguments about that!) in honour of the ballerina Anna Pavlova. The difference between the pavlova and a true meringue is that the true meringue is crisp all the way through whilst the pavlova has a softer, marshmallow-y centre. Neither of them resemble the topping of a lemon meringue pie, the only sort of ‘meringue’ that our friends had experienced.

I’ve made pavlovas for years, it is one of my favourite desserts, and I’ve become a dab hand at making the meringue bases. The secret of the perfect chewy centre is to leave the meringue in the oven once the baking is complete, for several hours or even overnight. The surface will be crispy but the centre will be soft. The meringues can be stored in an air-tight container for a couple of days, without the filling, but will lose their crispiness once cream is added, so I usually fill and decorate shortly before serving. However, even left-over pavlova, the next day, is still good!

Anyway, the reason for this digression is that I had 5 egg whites remaining from my Portuguese Custard Tart baking (see Exotically Eggy-Portuguese Custard Tarts) and I wanted to use them up. Rather than a full pavlova base, I thought that maybe individual small meringues would be useful to have as a garnish with ice cream, or fill with cream. I found recipes for ‘Snowballs’ and ‘Caramel Meringues’, so that might work.

The Recipes:

Standard meringues (Snowballs)

2 egg whites

115 g/4 oz/½ cup caster sugar *

15 ml/1 tbsp cornflour/cornstarch

5 ml/1 tsp white wine vinegar

¼ tsp vanilla essence/extract

Caramel meringue

115 g/4 oz/½ cup muscovado sugar**

2 egg whites

5 ml/2 tsp very finely chopped walnuts (optional)

• *I used standard North American granulated sugar
• ** Muscovado sugar is unknown here. It is a form of brown sugar, but is actually unrefined, rather than the soft brown sugars, which are white sugar with varying amounts of molasses added back. The best substitute for muscovado is dark soft brown sugar. I didn’t have any in and decided to opt for brilliant yellow sugar. This will have reduced the caramel taste of the final meringue.

Brilliant yellow sugar-dark soft brown sugar would be a better choice for a caramel taste.

Preheat the oven to 300˚F Convection/150˚C fan/Gas 2. I used convection because meringues should ideally be placed at the top of the oven in a standard oven, but I had 4 trays. If no convection (fan) oven, use the same temperatures but place your baking trays on the top shelf only.

Line four baking sheets (two for each meringue type) with baking parchment.

For the standard meringues, beat the egg whites in a grease-free bowl until very stiff peaks are present.

Stiff peaks

Add the sugar, a little at a time, whisking between each addition, until the meringue is stiff and glossy. Whisk in the vinegar, cornflour and vanilla.

Spoon onto the prepared sheets: I made about 14. Bake for 30 minutes. Preferably cool in the oven. if not possible, remove from the oven and leave to cool on the baking sheets.

For the caramel meringue, beat the egg whites, as above. Push the brown sugar through a metal sieve and add to the beaten egg whites, a mall portion at a time, whisking until thick and glossy.

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Caramel meringues.

Bake and cool as for the standard meringues.

Caramel (front) and standard meringues, after baking.

When cool, remove from the parchment, using a palette knife and store in an air-tight container.

I’m also including here my very favourite recipe for a pavlova base. This one works for me every time.

6 egg whites

350 g/12 oz caster sugar*

10 ml/2 tsp cornflour/cornstarch

10 ml/2 tsp vinegar**

• * over here I use standard granulated sugar
• ** any type, malt vinegar, white vinegar or white wine vinegar would work. I probably wouldn’t use balsamic!

Preheat the oven to 300˚F/150˚C/Gas 2.

Grease and line the base of an 8 ” cake pan or, preferably, line a baking sheet with parchment and draw a 8″ circle, in pencil.

Whisk the egg whites until stiff and standing in peaks.

Add half of the sugar and whisk until glossy.

Fold in remaining sugar, cornflour and vinegar with a large metal spoon.

Spoon into the tin or pile into the circle on the parchment (note the edges of the circle can be a little raised, compared with the centre, to make a ‘bowl’). Cook for 45 min in the top of the oven, then switch off and leave to cool in oven, or overnight. This bit is very important for a good result, so try to plan that you won’t need the oven before the pavlova is cooled.

So, I had a lot of meringues and wanted to do something with them. A pavlova would work, because I had whipping cream left over from my Portuguese Custard Tarts, but normally this had a fruit filling, such as strawberries or kiwi fruit (although I do have a recipe that uses a white chocolate mousse filling, which is to die for!). I had a thought, what about a sort of banoffee?

What is banoffee? It’s another one of those things that I don’t see over here, but it certainly used to be very popular back home. ‘Banoffee’ itself is a portmanteau word combining banana and toffee, usually in the form of a pie with a crumb base (made with crushed chocolate digestives for preference), a layer of toffee sauce made with condensed milk, bananas and whipped cream, usually with chocolate shavings to decorate. I have actually never made one as it used to be the signature dessert of one of our friends, and she would always bring one to our ‘do’s’-and very delicious it was, too. Maybe I should consider it for my next dinner party? Anyway, it contains bananas, so healthy and full of potassium!

I didn’t have any condensed milk in, so the real toffee sauce wouldn’t be possible, but maybe a caramel sauce could be made. Maybe even salted caramel? That would go nicely with the super-sweet meringues. I found a nice recipe and got to work.

2 tbp/30 ml water

½ cup/125 g granulated sugar/caster sugar

⅓ cup/80 ml whipping cream

1½ tbsp unsalted butter, cut into cubes

½ tsp vanilla extract/essence

½ tsp salt, or to taste

This made about ⅔ cup of sauce, plenty for the pavlova.

Have all your ingredients measured out in advance because this recipe can move quickly!

Place the water and sugar into a heavy-bottomed pan, heat over a medium heat and stir constantly until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture starts to bubble slightly. Use a pan larger than you think you need because, later, the mixture will bubble up quite a bit.

Increase the heat to high and bring to the boil, do not stir. Continue to boil until the syrup takes on an amber colour. This took about 2-3 minutes, but could take up to 12 minutes. Do not leave it because it can turn from amber to black (and burned) very quickly. (Ask me how I know-getting rid of burned hot toffee is no fun!). Remove from the heat.

Slowly whisk in the cream. This will cause the mixture to bubble up. Then mix in the butter, in small pieces, followed by the vanilla and then the salt. Note, for a standard caramel sauce reduce the salt to just a pinch. I found I had to reheat the sauce slightly, at this point, as some of the sugar had crystalized out into a lump. A gentle heat re-dissolved it without damaging the sauce. This is probably because I chose to half the quantities for my purposes, a slightly larger batch (and bigger pan) would probably retain more heat.

Transfer to a container and refrigerate until cold. This makes a very nice sauce for ice cream.

6-7 meringue pieces

1 cup/250 ml whipping cream

1 banana

1 portion caramel sauce (see recipe)

To assemble the pavlova, I filled a 9″ pie dish with standard meringue pieces. Depending on the size this would need 6-7 pieces. I whipped the cream and covered the meringue, then sliced the banana and placed it on top of the cream. Finally I poured over the caramel sauce, making sure to cover each piece of banana to prevent any blackening.

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Simple and delicious

The dessert will keep for a couple of hours in the fridge without losing crispness, and will be fine the next day, if a little less crisp.