This nude pavlova is perfect at Easter and can be made in advance and frozen unfilled. It’s also great served at a dinner party or instead of a birthday cake. It’s gluten and dairy free. That said, a good meringue is crunchy on the outside and chewy in the middle, and made with great ingredients. I got this recipe from the BBC good food website and its easy and delicious and works perfectly. You can layer whatever fillings you want on top and I can guarantee it will be popular when you serve it. It looks and tastes magnificent. Just don’t fill it too far ahead of time as it might get soggy.

Recipe

Serves 6-8

Ingredients:
4 egg whites
250g caster sugar
1 teaspoon of white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon of cornflour
1 vanilla pod or 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
Baking parchment

How:
Preheat the oven to 130°C.
Draw with a pencil a circle round a dinner plate, roughly ten inches, on the baking parchment.
Carefully separate the eggs and put the whites into a large clean dry bowl.
If you don’t know how, YouTube have Videos showing you how to separate eggs.
Whisk them with a hand mixer until they form stiff peaks. Start adding the sugar one tablespoon at a time until the meringue looks glossy.
If using a vanilla pod, slit it all the way down lengthways and scape the black tar like seeds off with a knife and mix with the vinegar, or if using vanilla extract add that to the bowl. Add the vinegar and cornflour and whisk in together.

Spread the meringue inside the circle and then create a wall around the edge by either dolloping teaspoons of mixture around it, or I used a piping bag and French nozzle and made star shaped blobs.
Whatever way you do it, it will still look gorgeous.
Bake for one hour then turn off the heat and let the pavlova cool in the oven completely. Et voila!

Ready to fill. Filling suggestion:

In this picture I put swirls of raspberry purée into double cream whipped with a little vanilla bean paste and a little sugar then sprinkled fresh raspberries on top and dusted with icing sugar. (I paint the inside of the meringue with melted white chocolate and let it set before I fill it so it doesn’t go soggy, and it means you can prepare it hours in advance)

Or you can add scoops of dairy free ice cream, chopped bananas with toasted almond slivers and chocolate sauce (I buy vegan Choc Shots by Sweet Freedom).
A punnet of strawberries chopped and tossed with the juice of half a lemon or lime and a tablespoon of sugar..on top of about 2 cups of whipped cream.

I shop at:
Waitrose
Sainsbury’s
Tesco
Lidl