Strawberry Pavlova
Celebrating my late mother's Kentish garden and Summer fruits, by sharing her recipe for meringues. It is the inspiration for a Pavlova with whipped cream and strawberries.
Welcome to Notes from my Kitchen - delicious weekly recipes and inspiration to eat seasonally from an English garden.
June is the month when Summer fruits are plentiful in the UK: apricots, blueberries, cherries, gooseberries and strawberries are ripe for the picking. In my late mother’s Kentish garden fruits are everywhere. Tumbling out of the fruit cages, warming against brick walls and hanging overhead from bushes and trees. Kent is often called the Garden of England as the counties fruit farmers historically supplied London with apples, cherries, and pears. In and around where we live stands will soon appear selling Kentish cherries in crates along the roadsides outside fruit farms and in farm shops. A key piece of kit is a cherry pitter, which can easily be found online (it is equally useful for olives). The cherries are usually sold alongside Kentish cherry juice which is rich with antioxidants, you can mix with water and ice to make a wonderful Summer drink. I also like making a compote from the cherries to have with thick Greek yogurt at breakfast.
This week I had a splurge and booked ballet tickets for the Christmas holidays, namely the Nutcracker. It is an annual tradition and something I look forward to every year; tickets sell out so quickly you have to be hot off the mark in June to secure seats for December. It felt a timely moment to celebrate Pavlova, a meringue-based dessert named after the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova. It is the perfect pudding to impress your family and friends, also to celebrate the bounty of Summer fruits.
This recipe was much treasured by my mother and she made meringues at least monthly. She would always stores egg whites in a jar in the door of the fridge. In my mind her kitchen wasn’t complete without a wicker basket full of meringues on the side somewhere. You can serve them as they are or crush them and layer with a vanilla cream and berries for Eton mess. They store brilliantly in a tin or air tight container so you can enjoy them for a few weeks. I am sure it is why friends and family remember them so fondly in relation to my mother, as anyone visiting would be offered meringues at some point during their stay.
Recipe of the Week
Strawberry Pavlova
Here is my late mother’s recipe for meringues and I am using it to make a Pavlova. This beautiful dessert looks both impressive and tastes amazing, the meringue and whipped cream have a lightness when eaten. You can decorate with any fruit but in these warmer months seasonal Summer berries are heavenly.
Ingredients
6 egg whites (3/4 cup)
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 tsp lemon juice
To serve
whipped cream and Summer berries
Method
Preheat the oven to 130 C fan oven.
Beat egg whites until relatively stiff, holding peaks. Gradually beat in 1 cup of sugar. Mix in the lemon juice, and then gradually beat in the remaining sugar in increments. The mixture should be glossy and voluminous.
Form two circles of the meringue on greaseproof paper. Bake in the oven until delicately browned and crusty. At a low temperature of 130 C fan oven this will take around 90 minutes.
Remove from the oven and cool on wire racks. Assemble the pavlova by topping one meringue with whipped cream and topping with the second meringue disc. Decorate with Summer berries and enjoy.