Melbalova, Pavlova, and Stuff

For someone avowedly not into Pavlovas, I certainly seem to have been making a lot of them recently.

For starters, I sold my first Pav, thanks to OJW for the order....He ordered a pav for a birthday, but later on text me to say that he decided to give it to his girlfriends instead. Isn't that sweet. I hope it wasn't coz the tectonic plates in the pav shifted, causing a massive landslide. I have found that since I use fresh cream for the pavs, the cream tends to melt rather quickly if not refrigerated well.

I like to make them in two discs, coz I find the meringue very sweet, and the sandwiching of the two discs gives me a chance to try with various fillings. I used to use the same lemon curd as I did for lemon meringue pie, coz it's a good way to use up the egg yolks, but found that some people are averse to sourness. Anyway, for this virginal commercial Pav, I used fresh whipping cream. The yellow bits were mango, for color, as OJW did not like the smell of jackfruit.

And recently, again, at a friend's Mid Autumn Festival Party, I decided to bring a predominantly yellow Pavlova, since it is the Moon Festival as well. I remember my late ancestors praying to the moon...I can't remember it's significance.

Alright, what do you get when you combine one of my favourite desserts, a Peach Melba, with a Pavlova? A MELBALOVA. (the song, Mr Boombastic suddenly plays in my head. Mr Lova Lova)

Which is what I did for this one here. I made a creme patiserrie, using the egg yolks, and used peaches as the main fruit.

It was a smashing success with the dinner guests, but with dinner guests, you can never really know if they're being polite or not. However, the same problem, the creme patisserie was melting rather quickly. Perhaps it wasn't beaten stiff enough, but by the end of it, whatever left of Melbalova was swimming in a sea of pastry cream, fruit and meringue.

As we've had our Pavs served in a far more distorted fashion before, I have resigned myself to the function over form theory.....WMW very brutally told me, "your desserts taste good, but fail in the looks department".

I've always had a phobia of burning custards, because that's how my custards usually end up, BURNT. And making pastry cream (creme patisserie) involves patiently stirring the custard in a pot over a low fire. However, once you succeed, especially when using real vanilla pods, it is a dark day when you have to resort to instant custard again.

After tweaking a bit, here's my creme patisserie recipe:

300ml milk, brought to a light boil, with the vanilla seeds and pod split.

3 yolks + 1/3rd cup sugar, whisked together.
2-3 tbspns cornflour added to the egg mixture. This will yield a lovely pale yellow custardy looking batter.

Pour a bit of the hot milk into the egg mixture, whisk together to stabilise. Slowly pour in the rest, constantly stirring.

Put back the entire mixture into the saucepan, and heat over low heat, until the mixture thickens.

You should get a gloriously yummy thickish sauce like the one below. At this stage, this can be used as a yummy topping on anything, really, apple pie, cake, trifle, or eaten just like that.

To finally transform it into a thicker cream, fold in 1 cup of whipped cream (whipped till thick), and lo and behold, a yummy, natural pastry cream. Oh, of course, refrigerate the custard mixture before incorporating the cream.

One of the best ways to use pastry cream, I reckon, is to stuff them into choux pastry. While my choux may not be as nice as Beard Papa's, the pastry cream certainly is comparable, and the entire taste is rather good, if I may say so myself. I served this at home group, and one of my friends took a bite from her husband, saying they'll share. After one bite, her eyes lit up, and she said, "yummm", and went to get her own. (she didn't know I made them).

So there you go, a good way to maximise your eggs....separating the whites from the yolk.