Ann Reardon

Pavlova Recipe Happy Australia Day

meringue cake recipe nigella pavlova

Pavlova or ‘pav’ as we call it in Australia is easy to make. If you have never had one before go ahead and try it. You will fall in love with this dessert!

Pavlova Meringue Ingredients

8 egg whites (make sure there is no shell or yolks at all in your whites)
2 1/2 cups caster sugar (also called superfine sugar)
2 tsp vinegar

Filling

600 millilitres (20.29 fluid ounces) cream (35% fat)
2 Tbsp icing sugar (powdered sugar)
1 tsp vanilla
250g (8.82 ounces) (or 1 2/3 cups) blueberries
250g (8.82 ounces)(or 1 2/3 cups) strawberries
1 banana and fresh lemon juice

Place all your ingredients into a bowl and whip on high speed of an electric mixer until it holds it shape when you lift up the beaters (turn them off before lifting up if you do not want your kitchen coated in splatters of sweet meringue.)

Using pencil draw three 19cm (7.48 inches) circles onto non-stick baking paper, turn the paper over so that the pencil will not touch the meringue.

Scoop the meringue evenly between the three circles and using the back of a spoon spread it out and shape it into a disc.

Bake in a slow oven 120C (248 degrees Fahrenheit) for 1 hour.

Turn the oven off and leave to cool in the oven, taking it out will cause large cracks.


Whisk together the icing sugar, cream and vanilla until soft peaks form.

Wash your fruit and slice the strawberries lengthwise. slice the banana and coat in lemon juice to prevent browning.

Assembly – please watch the video for assembly instructions.

To serve you can eat immediately, in which case the meringue will be crunchy or you can leave it in the fridge for an hour or more and the meringue in the middle will be like marshmallow and it is easier to slice.

pavlova recipe ann reardon how to cook that
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All recipe quantities in the book are in grams, ounces and cups.

96 Comments View Comments

  1. Hi Ann, is 120 deg C fan forced oven?

    • Hi dewi yes it is

  2. Hi, is it possible to reduce the amount of sugar in the Meringue. If so by how much.
    Thanks

    • Hi Tharaka, sorry it doesn’t work as well with less sugar it effects the texture.

  3. Hi Ann! I had so much fun checkin out your pavlova recipe! I’m really looking forward to baking it for my big family event. But then I act don’t have an oven so I’d like to ask issit okay if I use my microwave oven to do the meringue? And if it is, what temperature (low/medium/medium high/high) should I put it on? And how long is the exact time to wait for the perfect result? Pls lemme know ASAP Ann, I really need your help! Thank you for spending your time readin my comment! P/S ; ANN PLS I REALLY NEED TO KNOW!!!

    • its a low oven temp. so approximately 120 degrees Centrigrade

  4. Hi Ann

    could i add chocolate cream and chocolate sauce on the side?\
    I live in Swaziland ,Africa but my aunt lives i Sydney .
    Thank u so much, ill be visiting again soon i totally adore your show and i atched your sydney harbour bridge live it was so cool

    • hi jj yes you can add chocolate if you like 😀

  5. Hi Ann 🙂 I came across your youtube link of pavlova . I have used Joy of Baking and Laura In The Kitchen pavlova recipe before but I have one main problem as always is that my pavlova will stick to my baking paper. I tried to coat my baking paper with flour but somehow the pavlova doesn’t come off from the paper so easily as how you did it when you slide it off.

    I wonder, do you know what problem it may be? Thank you in advance.

    • Hi Iting, try using non-stick baking paper, it has a fine coat of silicone in the paper so nothing sticks to it.

  6. This cake made mothersday. My mom absolutely loved it and so did my whole family. We fought for the last piece. Thank you, great recipe. This is going to stay in my cookbook.

    • 😀 glad you loved it

  7. super easy recipe but it is super sweet for me..but delicious indeed thank you so much.. 🙂

  8. Hi, i love all your videos Ann:) i would like to know how many ml is your one cup measurement:) thanks

    • Or in grams if possible:) i need it more in grams:) thank you

    • Hi Nerryn 1 cup=250ml

  9. Hello ann , im in love with your cooking channel !! I would really like to make this but I dont want such a large amount , if I halved the recipe and used balsamic vinegar instead , Is it alright ? Also, how long do I need to bake it and should it be baked at the same temperature? Thank you so muchh , love you and thank you for sharing your recipes . I’d be grateful if I get a reply as soon as possible . Thanks again

    • hi glen yes you can halve the recipe, bake at the same temp

  10. Hello,
    I was getting ready to make this for my family and friends on thanksgiving but the meringue wouldn’t harden after an hour and a half of cooking it on 245 degrees Fahrenheit, which is close to 120 degrees Celsius. I’m not going to give up but i shall sadly have to wait until another day to make it. I was wondering though what could have caused this? Would it have worked if I had cooked it for longer? Could it have been the wrong sugar? I live in America and we don’t have caster sugar or at least not in my local grocery store. I know caster sugar is super-fine sugar but i couldn’t find it either so. I was just wondering so any response would be great. Please and thank you 🙂

    • Hi, I’ve made meringues before. Make sure not to expose it on a fan because the last time I exposed it, my meringues turned so soft. 🙂

    • Hi Harmony, What sugar did you use instead? If normal sugar then yes probably baking for longer could have rescued it

  11. Hi ann, whenever I make a Pavlova, it always cracks- a lot, and I have had many failed attempts in preventing it from doing so. I leave it in the oven overnight. It is fine as it is cooking, however soon after I turn the oven off it cracks and collapses. Could you please tell me what I am doing wrong?

    • Hi Devya, leaving in the oven to cool so that there is not a sudden drop in temp usually helps with this, have you tried baking at a lower temp for longer so it has more of a chance to dry out a thicker layer so it is a bit stronger.

  12. Hello,
    Thank you for great tutorial. I would like to if I can make individual pavs and if so, do I adjust the temperature and time? I also want to know can I make these a day ahead?

    Thank you again.
    Josie

    • Hi Josie yes you can make individual ones and they will not take as long to cook, you’ll have to keep checking on them to see when they are ready. Yes you can make them a day ahead, store in an airtight container and fill and decorate on the day you are serving, store int eh fridge once filled.

  13. Will custard work with this recipe?

    • A tried it with custard and it held the first day but became mush the second. It still tasted good though

      • hi bunny, the liquid in the custard would dissolve the meringue :S

  14. hi. can i know, what kind of vinegar you use?

    • white vinegar

  15. Hello Ann!! Thank you for a wonderful recipe!
    I had a question for you though. How do you think, would custard work for this cake? Here in Russia we like to combine custard with whipped cream, and i personally like this type of filling better, than just whipped cream

    • good question, I am thinking that the liquid in the custard might dissolve the meringue so I would make a small test one first if I was you

  16. Hey, I came upon your site on youtube and am so excited to try this, the pavlova is actually in the oven as I type this and I cant wait to let my family try this. I actually have rectangle serving platters and shaped them into rectangles, I hope its easier to cut that way as well. Thanks for the video and detailed recipe. Kat

  17. Hi,
    I have the basic model of microwave ie it does not have conduction, convection system. I just wanna know can i make meringue and other cakes and desserts in this oven? .

    • Hi Uzma, there are some cakes you can make in the basic microwave but you will need a microwave safe cake ring (it has a hole in the centre because the centre doesn’t cook) the brownie recipe on this site works in the microwave. Meringues will not work.

  18. Hi, what’s texture like inside the meringue? Chewy or marshmallow type?
    I tried once, the whole thing including inner part is crispy. Where went wrong?

    • Hi Sandie if it is completely dry ti has been in the oven too long. It will be chewy if you cover in cream and use immediately. Marshmallowy if you add the cream and leave in the fridge for a couple of hours.

  19. Hi, how do you bake those three pavlova? Are you doing it in one shot?

    • Hi mun, yes if you can fit three trays in your oven bake them all at once, rotate the trays after 20mins.

  20. hi ,
    i just want to know what kind of cream is it

    • Hi gabriella, You can use thickened cream/ pure cream/ pouring cream or I think in the US it is called heavy cream

      • can I use whipping cream instead ?

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