Christmas Pavlova

Equipment:

• Stand mixer with a whisk attachment

Ingredients:

Custard:

• 250ml cream

• 1 TBS vanilla essence

• 6 egg yolks

• 160 g sugar

• 10g corn flour

• 20g butter

• 5g salt

Merengue:

• 150g egg white (about 6 eggs)

• 150g sugar

• 137g sifted icing sugar

• 10g sifted corn flour

• 1 tsp vanilla essence

Decorations:

• Strawberries

• Blueberries

• Grapes

• Fresh mint

Method:

1. Begin by making the custard. In a pot pour in your cream and vanilla on a low heat and leave to simmer.

2. In separate bowl, whisk the yolks, cornflour, and sugar.

3. Once your cream is simmering, gradually pour this into the egg mixture, whisking constantly.

4. Pour this all back into your pot on a low heat and whisk constantly until very thick.

5. Take off the heat and whisk in your butter and salt.

6. Sieve your custard into a bowl, plastic contact wrap and leave in the fridge to cool.

7. To make your merengue, start whisking your egg whites.

8. Combine your sugars and corn flour in a bowl.

9. Once your egg whites start to froth significantly, slowly pour in your sugar mix bit by bit, add your vanilla, and continue to whisk your egg whites until medium peaks have formed. This will take a while.

10. You know medium peaks have formed as the egg whites can hold their own structure without sinking into itself.

11. Stencil out 6 circles onto a sheet of baking paper. Each circle should be about 1 cm smaller than the next. The size of the circles are up to you.

12. Pipe the meringue into the circles in any style you desire.

13. In a preheated oven of 70C, bake for 2 hours.

14. Keep an eye on these to ensure they do not over bake and become yellow.

15. You know that the merengue is done when it pulls away very easily from the baking sheet.

16. To assemble, place your largest merengue circle on a plate, and layer custard and fruit.

17. Repeat with the next size merengue and finish off with icing sugar.