Last Saturday was Gabri (my host mum)'s birthday and being the uber organised person that I am I totally had a present organised for her (that, by the way, was sarcasm in case you didn’t get it). So instead of my awesome (non-existent) pre-organised present I decided that I was going to cook/bake something of the dolce variety. I rather quickly how ever discovered that in order to do so I would have to venture to the shops by my self (Giulia was at school) to get the ingredients that I was missing. This was also made slightly more difficult by the fact that I had not decided what I was going to make.
I eventually came down to two options; apple pie or meringue... a friend of mine (the Kuostar) had resently successfully made meringues in the microwave so I thought this might be a simple way to create and Aussie (or possibly Kiwi) dessert without having to spent hours beating egg whites (the only beating devises I could find where an eletric mixer (hand held) and a whisk). Unfortunately however this required icing sugar of which I could find none... I didn’t end up going to the shop because I decided the chances of me being able to find icing sugar by myself where pretty slim. Giulia and I were going somewhere for dinner while Gabri went elsewhere meaning if I made meringue we weren’t going to eat it until the next day anyway so I decided to wait until Giulia could come with me. Shops are apparently closed on Sunday (something I’m not used to living on the same road as an IGA in Australia) and we ended up going out to diner (with an aunt and some cousins from Verona) that night anyway.
On Sunday I spied some Kiwifruit in the fruit bowl (it turns out that Nonna and Nonno Scaletti grow them) and decided that I definitely wanted to make Pav (apple pie isn’t really all the Aussie now is it?). Due to the fact that (ooooh look I got some FPS in here =P) I had procrastinated soooo long and the fact I was going to decorate with Kiwis I thought I might as well make proper pav and not microwave it (I’ve also had some rather … interesting experiences with eggs in the microwave... if you haven’t heard it involved an explosion... enough said right?). However this then involves beating eggs for a stupidly long amount of time and Giulia is studying for this massive exam thing on the weekend. On Tuesday's (that would be today) I finish school at 12 and Giulia finishes at 2 so I thought this would be the perfect time to do all the beating and thus decided to end my procrastination...
it turns out that we did In fact have all the ingredients for proper pav in the house so I didn’t need to venture to the shops. It is however worth noting that after throughly searching the entire house TWICE I did not find any devices for measuring other than 200cc plastic cups, a 1L liquid measuring jug and a set of electric scales (yay) that desplay 'err' when you turn them on (not yay, I think it has flat bats). It is probs also worth noting that I have never made pav before... meringues yes (from the same recipe In fact) but i've never had to deal with trying to make pav. Anyway I used the plastic cups to measure my amount of sugar (fortunately the only measurement other than a ½ tspn for which I used.... a teaspoon!) and set off on my 20min hand beater holding experience. Everything went quite smoothly but the beater only had speeds 'slow' and 'less slow' and looking back I really needed a 'not at all slow' and a 'rather fast' because I don’t think I managed to get it quite stiff enough (but that could also have been due to my inaccurate sugar measurements).
After email stressing to Mum while it was in the oven about all the things that was wrong with it, it seemed to turn out ok. And we both concluded that it would probs taste fine anyway (and plus I was the only one who would know if it was wrong). While it looked disappointingly un-pavlova-like I think it looked quite cool with cream and Kiwis on it. I also had a disagreement with the cream that I put on top. The cream we buy is UHT cream for putting on pasta and resembles thickened cream (which as I’m sure you'll know doesn’t whip). Gabri also made Giulia tell me several times that it wasn't cream for sweets, I did however manage to convince her it was all fine because I would add a little bit of icing sugar (there is a tiny little pot for sprinkling over tarts/cakes etc). Stubbornly I still tried to whip the cream just to see what would happen (not very much, other than making me cream flecked). Anyway; pavlova on plate, cream on pavlova, kiwis on cream, camera in hand, place pav in front of Gabri say 'per tuo compleanno' (for your birthday) end of Pavlova Pandemonium. I named it the Pandemonius Pavlova (in my head and on facebook at least) because it was rather stressful in the making (did I mention that the beater heads wouldn’t clip into the body and thus I had to be careful so as to not accidentally release spinning missiles? No I don’t think that I did...).
Final product was the shape of an oversized chocolate melt with a 2.5mm crust and lots of spongy filling; very tasty. Pictures to insue:
ARGH! I almost forgot to say that it DID tasty uber nommy! (in English that translates to very nice) Everyone seemed to thoroughly enjoy it and they were even fighting over who got the last bit (Gabri won; I believe her argument was that it was her birthday cake which is fair enough)
No comments:
Post a Comment