Eternal Sweet Struggle

My love for sweet foods and desserts really has no bounds, sadly sometimes that love is unrequited.  I once managed to make my whipped cream into a nice pile of butter ( it was actually pretty good but obviously I needed the cream more than the butter). Sponge cakes where never a breeze until I found a recipe that managed to produce THE best sponge ever and after that my luck seemed to change, I manage every cake recipe now. Before I could make crepes there has been a lot of batter wasted and eventually I managed even that, including the flip in the pan.

I have a love/hate relationship with meringues: I love to eat them and they hate me with a passion. It’s a swing or a miss situation with them, every single time. Logically speaking I probably had a lot of mishaps with wrong eggs, wrong temperatures and wrong utensils. But in the back of my head I started considering other options when another batch of Pavlova or meringues failed. Obviously there was a weekly meeting in Meringue Land where they would collectively decide that person A would have great ones this week, person B would see theirs collapse and person C will have burned ones. I would picture the little meringues sitting around a table discussing the fate of mine while giggling in an evil high-pitched tone. Frankly, without this vision, I probably would have given up on them a long time ago.

It should be one of the easiest things to make, with only 2 ingredients: 3 egg whites and 150 grams of  fine caster sugar. I always add the juice of half a lemon in the mix also, seems to work  great in making the whites stiff and glossy. Also important, bowl and utensils should be crisp clean without any residue, fat or water. Great way to achieve this is to use the same lemon to coat the bowl and your whisks. And after that it’s simply a matter of whisking the egg whites to soft peaks, adding a spoon of sugar at a time and keep mixing until the whites are stiff and shiny. I usually whisk until the sugar is dissolved before adding the next spoonful and always end up with a smooth meringue. You can test if its smooth enough by rubbing a drop between your fingers, if you can still feel grains of sugar you better keep on whisking. After that there is not much that can go wrong anymore, bake the meringue in a 100 C oven for 2 hours and they are ready. Today I have chosen the simple approach of whipping up some cream with blueberries and just filling my meringue circle. I would say it was a breeze but I would be lying to you and to myself.

Early Pavlova

My best friend once said: If a country existed where desserts where the primary food you would probably rule that country. And this is very true. Quite often I find the ‘rules’ regarding what is considered breakfast, lunch and dinner a bit too.. tight? I’m no stranger to eating something for lunch that would fit better in a dinner. Or switch my decent breakfast with something more non-breakfast-y. Today is a day where I was more in the mood for the lovely Pavlova I made yesterday instead of my bread and omelette. I regret nothing.

I used the recipe from Taste.com ( which by the way is a brilliant site! ) minus the circle drawing. It seems I’m more of squares kind of girl ^^

Vanilla Sky

The sun is back in full swing and so are the fresh desserts. Since my fridge is pretty much empty ( groceries need to be done asap! ) I whipped up some cream in a blender with some fresh peaches and used canned peaches for decoration. Gotta love those syrups that get into the dessert when it is in the fridge for a while. Yes, we are ready for summer over here ^^