Quick! You have 20 people coming over for food and drink tonight and you’ve forgotten about dessert.
You want to bake, you over-achiever you, and none of this cookie or brownie business. That’s for bake sales and office parties. You want a showstopper.
Can I suggest pavlova? I have a few reasons why:
Plenty of people have no idea what it is. You’ll look like a pastry badass.
It scales easily, and is economical enough to make for a crowd.
It’s endlessly customizable.
It’s ridiculously easy to make, and doesn’t require much active attention.
Seriously, if you can turn on an electric mixer and have access to decent fruit, you can make a great pavlova. But in case condition one above applies to you, here’s the story: Pavlova is a cream-topped meringue dessert of Aussie or New Zealand extraction, allegedly named for the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova whose grace and beauty were apparently best captured in a pillow of egg white and cream. In the dessert’s motherland(s), strawberry-kiwi and/or passionfruit are the most common fruity additions; in the West, berries tend to take center stage.
