The Daring Bakers' Challenge June 2010: Pavlova

The June 2010 Daring Bakers' Challenge was hosted by Dawn of Doable and Delicious. Dawn challenged the Daring Bakers to make Chocolate Pavlovas and Chocolate Mascarpone Mousse. The challenge recipe is based on a recipe from the book Chocolate Epiphany by  Francois Payard. 

I was very happy when I read about this challenge because I have never made Pavlova before. I like the fact that the Daring Bakers' Challenges always make me do some dessert that I've never experimented with before! The two downsides of this challenge were that neither Wally nor I like meringues (and the base of the Pavlova is a big meringue!) and that I was going to be in Italy most of the month. In other words, I knew I was going to make the Pavlova at the very last minute and I usually don't like rushing through new things. 

So, yesterday I have started this challenge by making the chocolate meringue, which is the base of the Pavlova and the Chocolate Mascarpone Mousse. Finally, today I have made the Mascarpone Cream for the drizzling, which requires the previous preparation of the Creme Anglaise. 

These are, at the end of the day, four recipes. I am not going to rewrite them here. Dawn did a great job herself, so I'm referring you all to the Daring Kitchen website. Here is my result. The one thing I did different is that I made a white chocolate mascarpone mousse for the top. I was very happy about my meringue and the mascarpone cream but not at all about the mousse. It was not at all a mousse and instead it was very lumpy but I knew that with the white chocolate instead of dark chocolate I could have had this problem. The big surprise to me though was: we loved it! And above all we love the chocolate meringue!