And on this episode of Laura in the kitchen, I want to show you how to make a chocolate pavlova.

I'm thrilled to share this recipe with you. It's incredibly simple and easy. Now if you've been following me for a while,

then you know I made a regular pavolva last year, above at this time, for Mother's Day, I believe

And I figured, that was a pretty good hit, everybody loved it. I might as well show you the chocolate version for this year.

Even if you're not a mom, or you're not making this on Mother's Day because I'm not making it for Mother's Day,I'm making it today.

This is something you need to have in your repertoire. You want to impress people, and you want something incredibly simple and easy.

The ingredients for this, you probably already have on hand. You'll need some egg whites, plain or grain sugar, cocoa powder, a pinch of instant expresso, a balsamic vinegar,a pinch of salt, and vanilla extract.

Those are the ingredients to make the base, you know, the actual meringue base. And then we need to fill it with some

sween cream,we're gonna top it with some raspberries, chocolate shavings.

(singing)If I were an opera singer, I'd be doing opera music right now. But I'm not, so I'm not going to. I don't want to scare you.

The first thing you want to do is get your oven preheated at 350. The second thing you want to do is take some parchment paper, any eight-inched object, round object, that you might have. This is just a small plate that I have, trace it with a pencil.

And then you want to put this upside down, so that you can kind of see where you'd traced it but you don't want your meringue to actually touch the pencil.

Now, you know there was a debate last year, over whether not you should trace it or don't trace it or not. Do what you feel comfortable. Do what make you feel good.

I trace it , I want to make sure I'm right. Now I'm going to mix this in my standing mixer. You can do this by hand, umm,

unless you want to suffer nervous breakdown, which I'm totally fight against it because this takes a while for the egg whites to

get to right consistency.

So I get my egg whites in here,I'm gonna turn this on.

add in my salt, now we'll say, it's crucial for your mixing bowl and your whisk, you know, attachment, to be clean. Without

any oil residue, otherwise the egg whites won't beat properly.So I'm gonna let this go until it becomes nice and frothy,

and then we'll start adding in our sugar. So once egg whites are frothy,

you're gonna start adding in your sugar. And you're just gonna add the sugar and let this go for a good seven minutes or so

until the egg whites are stiff peaks and super glossy and when you touch it with your fingers,

you don't feel the graininess from the sugar, that's when you know they're done.

I'll show you what they look like when they're there.

Finally! That took a while.That's why I do it with my standing mixer.

I'm just gonna take my beater, put some of the batter like that, that holds the parchment paper in place. There you have it, alright!

Beautiful!Beautiful! OK! Now that you got your egg whites, they're beautifully, glossy, perfect, like that

gonna add in your balsamic vinegar, or you could use white wine vinegar,that is what gives you

that pavlova texture. Some vanilla extract, and your cocoa powder and instant expresso,

which I'm just gonna sift this, because I'm wanna make sure there's no lumps in here, whatsoever.

See those lumps right there?Cocoa? Job done!

And now, what I'm going to do, is just fold this, fold everything together

Be very careful to not deflake the egg whites. So just fold them in and keep on moving.

That's great! Alright!

Just gonna put this right into the center, and just smooth it out

don't let it go outside the line, so that you get a really good size path

'cause this will expand as it bakes. Ah, how beautiful! So excited!

I'm so so excited. I just take my spatula and just round it around the sides to get the outside nice and smooth.

Just gonna take my spoon, get this off my spatula, and that's all I do!

Ok!Doesn't have to be perfect. Now that looks perfection.

I'm gonna put this into the oven, it's at 300 for about an hour to an hour and ten minutes.

You're looking for the outside to be that wonderful meringue crisp-like texture,and the inside to be like marshmallow consistency.

That's perfection. Then what you're gonna do is to turn the oven off, open the door of the oven just a little bit

and let this cool in there completely. You can do this the night before,wich is what I mostly do.

When I make a pavlova, I do it the night before.

Leave the door open a little bit....the oven turned off. The oven door opened a little bit, oven turned off.

let it cool completely, and once it's there, I'm gonna fill this baby up, top it with our berries, and get going to the next step.

My beautiful chop of pavlova was in the oven for an hour and ten minutes. And then what I ended up doing was just leaving it

in the oven with the oven turned off with the door slightly opened overnight. I'm not going to lie, I'm went on Youtube

I started watching (Italian). Let me know if you know what I'm talking about.

I started watching (Italian). Let me know if you know what I'm talking about.

And if you do know what I'm talking about, what is your favorite (italian) movie?

Anyway, all subject! So I let it completely cooled overnight, and now it is time to finish it.

Now I get this huge spatula here. I'm just gonna run it underneath to loosen it.

So I don't have to flip it upside down. There you go, buddy!

And it is perfection. It is what a pavlova should be. It's cracked and dried out up top and all the outside.

But it still got that gluey marshmallow interior. (singing)

Now I have here, is some whipped cream that I sweened.

This is just about a cup and a quarter of heavy cream whipped with some confectioner sugar, just a couple tablespoons.

And now I'm just gonna take this, and fill this all way up.

I just wipped it with a hand-held whisk. Just fill this in.......

And I'm gonna top mine with some berries, raspberries. But I'm gonna tell you,

I was very lucky the other day. I went to the grocery store and I found some passion fruit.

So I'm saving it 'cause I wanna make pavlova within the next few days, regular pavlova.

and top it with passion fruit so I did here. That's a phenomenon combination, so that's what I'm doing.

Then I'm gonna top it with just tons of my raspberries, doesn't have to be perfect

you just wanna cover the top of them

Now this is done. You can serve this as is with the nice dusting of cocoa.

But if you just wanna take this to another level, I've got some white chocolate and dark chocolate bars here.

And now what I'm gonna do is to push this close to me, and then just take my knife

and then run it like so and making those little curls. I'm gonna do that until I've got quite a few of the dark chocolate and white chocolate

just a scatter on the top, it makes things a little bit extra like, fancy, and you know me

I do not have a knack for decorating things, it's just not my forte.

but this is just an easy simple way to take the dessert to another level, and makes it a little bit more special.

I think this is plenty. I mean seriously, how proud would you be to serve this to someone?

I mean, I'm proud to serve anyting to anybody, because, you know, you cook and you make something for someone, it's always special.

but....(singing) Alright, I can't take it another second.

I'm going go into this, and I am, let's just say "excited" isn't the word.

oops! I love meet some pavlova. Ooh ooh ohh! Look in the interior. Look in there! Look!Look!Look!

I don't think you're ready for this journey. It's all I'm saying.

Alright, let's, let's do this. Let's do this.

I don't watch baseball. Which one is a homerun?Is it baseball?I think so. Homerun!

Or if it's football, I'd say "touch down." Right? I should probably watch more sports.

I'm so excited, it's sweet, not too sweet. I feel I got it stuck on my face.

The delicious were as fresh burst with the raspberries. Don't think you can get any better than this.

Go to laurainthekitchen.com to get this recipe. I'm gonna stuck my face with the rest of this. I hope you have enjoyed your time with me. I'll see you next time!Bye bye.

last year