Nigella’s Morello Cherry Pavlova

The Nigella’s Morello Cherry Pavlova is the best pavlova recipe I have ever found.

It’s from the great Nigella Lawson so I don’t bother playing around with the base. It always works, it’s always delicious and the best thing about it is that you can make a few variations just by adding other ingredients.

Feel like a chocolate pav? Add 1/3 cup cocoa. Desiring a pretty pink rose pav? Add a few drops of pink food colouring or fold through 1/3 cup raspberry coulis then sprinkle the outside with rose petals.

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180°C

2. Beat the egg whites until silky peaks form

3. Gradually add the sugar one tablespoon at a time, wait a bit before adding the next spoonful

4. Once all the sugar has been added allow it to mix for another minute or so

5. Add the cornflower, vinegar and vanilla and fold through with a metal spoon

6. Add three tbsp coulis and gently fold through

7. Place dollops of meringue on an oven tray lined with baking paper or create one large circle, place in the oven then turn the heat down to 120°C

8. Bake for 50 - 60 mins

9. Turn the oven off, leave the door ajar, and leave to cool down in the oven.

10. Drain the cherries and place in a saucepan with 1/3 cup of the juice, cornflour and sugar.

11. Bring to the boil over medium heat and cook until it starts to thicken.

12. Blitz with a stick blender.

13. Combine the whipped cream and vanilla extract

14. Top pav with cream, coulis, fresh cherries and flake

I found myself armed with double the number of cherries I needed to create a different recipe this week (and they cost three times more than I thought they would!) that I decided to test my theory once more and created a Morello cherry coulis and folded some through the pav mix.