So here it is, the last of our Great British Bake Off bakes! We love working with meringue so jumped at the chance to create this 4 layered fruity pavlova.
As soon as we saw the signature challenge of the final we knew it was something we wanted to take on. And then the technical was a viccy sponge, don’t get us wrong here, it’s a great cake but everyone has their own go to recipe for it. In the showstopper there were loads of great components but sausage rolls is something we’ve done a couple times on the blog, we posted a savoury pastry about 2 weeks ago (chorizo and camembert tart, yes please), chocolate cake we’ve done before… you see where we are going here, so a pavlova it was!
If you don’t already know that Candice won, you’ve most likely been living under a rock for the past week! We have been a fan of hers all series but thought the 3 finalists were on a pretty level playing field entering the last show, but Candice really proved herself and those sausage rolls… with the crackling tails?!?! (girl after our own heart!)
We really love working with pink grapefruit, in fact we used it in the very first GBBO bake of this series, and have been wanting to try out making a curd with it for some time, so took this as our opportunity! It’s ideal as it means you can use up the egg yolks left over from making the meringue! Our recipe for how to make this will be up on the blog very shortly if you want to give it a go! If not you can always use lemon curd with some pink grapefruit zest mixed into it!
Using the pistachios and pomegranate seeds in this really brings the pavlova to life. Even though we’d coloured our meringue layers to create a subtle ombré, the bright pink and green look great between the layers and sprinkled over at the end. We made our layers gradually smaller, like Candice did for hers, as we loved the look this gave, it’s a really simple way of making the pavlova much more visually impactful!
- 150g egg whites
- 300g sugar
- 300ml double cream
- 2 tbsp icing sugar
- 250g pink grapefruit curd
- seeds of 1 pomegranate
- 50g pistachios, shelled and chopped
- Spread out the icing sugar on a lined baking sheet and put in the oven at 150C for about 5 mins.
- Whilst the sugar is in the oven, begin whisking the egg whites to stiff peaks.
- Once the egg whites are at stiff peak stage start adding in sugar a spoonful at a time whilst continuing to whisk on a high speed. Once all the sugar has been added whisk for a little longer or until you can turn the bowl upside down without any falling out.
- Draw out 4 circles a range of evenly spaced sizes from about 20cm wide to 7 or 8cm.
- Pipe kisses of meringue on the outside of the circle close together so they touch, then spoon more meringue into the middle and spread out to make an even layer that is slightly dipped in the middle to hold the filling.
- Bake at 110C for 45mins – 1hr 15mins depending on the size of the layer. Once baked, leave to cool in the oven.
- Once the meringue is cooled, whip the cream with the icing sugar until you have a thick, stiff consistency.
- Spread some of the cream over the bottom layer of meringue, then add some curd, swirling it into the cream slightly and then sprinkle over some pomegranate seeds and pistachio. Then take the next meringue layer and place on top. Repeat for each layer of meringue.
- Once you’ve reached the top layer spoon on a dollop of meringue and then add curd so that it dribbles down the sides. Sprinkle over whatever pomegranate seeds and pistachio you have left.
- Serve as soon as possible, this is best eaten on the day it’s made.
Look at that cross section!! Shout out to the 2 old ladies who saw this being carried down the road and said that paul would approve, we certainly hope you’re right!! If you want to catch up with the rest of our GBBO bakes click here!
