Pavlova is a scrumptious Australian/New Zealand dessert made from baked sweetened egg white meringue topped or layered with fruit and whipped cream, and the first time I made it, it was a disaster.
Early in my career I was commissioned by a local catering hall to make around 100 individual pavlovas to be filled with fruit for a dinner honoring an Australian food personality. Up to this point, the only time that I’d made anything resembling a pavlova was for a plated dessert composed of a completely crisp meringue shell holding a mousse. So off I went, full steam ahead, and baked up 100 shells that were crackly crisp from the outside to the center. To make matters worse, I practically shrink-wrapped the boxes to make sure that they would stay completely crisp. All was successful, I thought, until some months later, when I came across a truly proper recipe that explained that a good pavlova meringue is crisp on the outside with a marshmallow-y soft center. Oops. I can only imagine the sound of folks clumsily shattering though the crunchy meringue, bits of dried egg white flying everywhere.
