Pavlova Roll

Ingredients

• For about 6 servings:
• 4 large egg whites
• 1/8 tsp salt
• ½ cup castor sugar
• ½ tsp vanilla essence
• 1 tsp white vinegar, optional

For the filling:

• About 1 cup cream
• About ¼ cup icing sugar
• Fresh strawberries, raspberries or 4 passionfruit

Method

This impressive looking and delicious dessert is shaped like a sponge roll but is made of meringue (softer than pavlova), and filled with whipped cream and distinctively flavoured seasonal fruit such as strawberries, raspberries or passionfruit. When fresh fruit is not available, try the thickened, sweetened fruit sauces intended for use with icecream and yoghurt, or lemon honey, etc. (My daughter suggested that packet mousses could be used as fillings, too.)

It can be eaten less than an hour after it is made. (Commercial pavlova rolls are sold frozen and may be sliced and eaten completely or partly frozen, or thawed, so I imagine that this pavlova roll could be, too!).

Once you have made a pavlova roll once or twice, you will find it easy and quick. The recipe is long only because of the handling details!

Turn the oven on to 180°C (or to 170°C if using fanbake), with the rack in the middle of the oven. Line a rectangular baking dish with low sides, about 23 x 33cm (or 9 x 13 inches) with a Teflon liner or a piece of non-stick baking paper which has been very lightly buttered or coated with non-stick spray. The liner must go up the sides of the baking tray as well as covering the bottom completely.

Break the eggs carefully into a thoroughly clean, fat-free bowl (they will not whip to stiffness if there is any yolk in them). Add the salt, sugar and vanilla and beat the mixture, preferably with an electric beater, until the meringue is very stiff, forming peaks with only a very small tip turning over when the beater is lifted from them.

Using the back of a tablespoon, spread the very stiff meringue mixture evenly in the lined baking tin, then make an attractive swirled pattern all over the top, again using the back of the spoon.

While the roll bakes, prepare another sheet of non-stick baking paper (or Teflon liner) by coating it lightly with non-stick spray, then sprinkling the surface very lightly with a little castor sugar

Bake the roll for 10 – 15 minutes, until the whole surface is light brown, the centre feels firm, and the mixture has puffed up. Do not overcook or the roll will shrink and deflate.

Carefully lift the hot, cooked meringue mixture from the oven and slide it, and its lining paper, from its baking pan on to a wire cooling rack. Gently free the edges of the meringue mixture from the liner, so the liner lies flat. Then lie the second piece of prepared baking paper ( or liner) on top of the meringue, sugared side down, and hold another rack or oven sheet on top of it for a moment, then carefully and quickly flip everything over so that the meringue is on the second liner with its best side down. Carefully lift away the baking paper that was under the meringue as it cooked, and leave the roll to cool. (It should take no longer than 10 minutes).

Meanwhile, beat the cream and icing sugar until stiff and spread about 2/3 of it on the cold, unbrowned surface of the meringue. (Don’t use too much cream or the roll will be hard to roll up. Top the cream with some chopped strawberries or, raspberries or drizzle over some passionfruit pulp.

Lifting the roll on its liner, roll the long sides up and inwards towards the centre, making a long roll. Leave the liner wrapped round the roll, with the join-side down, and refrigerate the roll, still in its liner, until close to serving time.

To serve, remove the surrounding paper or liner and place the roll, join side down, on a long plate or board, etc.

Decorate the top with the remaining whipped cream (piped if possible,) and decorate it with more of the fruit used in the filling, and perhaps, some mint leaves. Cut in slices with a serrated knife to serve.

Notes:

You can pipe whipped cream in a plastic bag with the corner cut out.

You can turn granulated sugar into castor sugar by food processing it with the chopping blade!

Suggested Wines To Go With Today's Recipe:-

Champagne:

Deutz Marlborough Cuvee Rose

Number Eight Cuvee NV

Quartz Reef Chauvet NV

or

Moscato:

Brown Brothers 2006

or

Dessert Riesling:

Brown Brothers Crouchen Riesling 2006

Northrow Botrytised Riesling 2005

Ngatarawa Glazebrook Noble Harvest Riesling 2005