Pavlova? I thought that was a city in Spain...

Having made fresh pumpkin ice cream, I finished washing up the dishes and came to find that I had a bowl full of egg whites left over. I though long and hard about what to do with them, not wanting to be wasteful. Then inspiration struck as I remember an episode of Chuck’s Day Off I watched on the Food Network earlier in the week. Chuck’s Day Off is one of my favourite cooking shows of late, it follows a chef out of Montreal who cooks meals on his day off for staff, friends or suppliers using recipes and ingredients that tie into their background. Chuck is a laid back chef who makes delicious comfort food, and explains it in a simple way to make elaborate dishes seem doable. Getting back to the recipe, on this weeks episode he was making White Chocolate Pavlovas. These decadent little desserts are meringues with a cream mixture topped off with a jam. I took the base recipe and utilized ingredients we had around the house to make it my own.

For starters, I replaced the white chocolate with milk chocolate chips. White chocolate is fine and all but just not my style. I prefer the bolder flavours of milk and dark chocolate. Second, Chuck made a fresh marmalade from ground cherries. Having never used ground cherries, I substituted some fresh strawberries.

My biggest gripe with this recipe were the meringues. The recipe called for cooking the meringues in the oven for 3 hours! This was way too long and completely dried out the meringues making them crunchy all the way through, not soft and marshmallowy as the recipe describes. Overall my favorite part of this dish was the chocolate cream. It tastes like a denser chocolate mousse.

Recipe: White Chocolate Pavlovas