The local Toastmaster’s online (i.e. webcam) speech contest is Monday. Last Wednesday, one of my competitors gave a practice run of her speech. It was very good and blew mine out of the water. I’ve thrown that out and I’m starting over.
I like to watch YouTube cooking videos, but they’re all edited. I’m going to try to do one live – in five to seven minutes. This may fail badly, which might be a good thing because if it’s amazing, I’m going to need to do it again for the area contest.
I’ve decided to make Pavlova because it’s simple and it looks pretty – and I’ve made it before. The recipe (as you can guess by the links, from King Arthur):
Meringue
3 large egg whites (90g to 105g)
pinch of table salt
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 cup (198g) King Arthur Baker’s Special Sugar (aka superfine/castor sugar)
1 tablespoon cornstarch
Topping
1 1/2 cups (340g) heavy cream or whipping cream
1/4 cup (28g) confectioners’ sugar
1 teaspoon King Arthur Pure Vanilla Extract
2 cups (283g) fresh fruit (strawberries, blueberries, sliced kiwi, etc)
Time is going to be the key constraint. I’m going to need to do the “have multiple versions of everything in various stages” trick.
Meringue
There are three key points I want to make with meringue: Room temperature eggs, separating eggs, and a perfectly clean bowl. I think four batches will do it:
- A one-egg batch to pretend to make live.
- A half-batch pre-piped on the sheet. I’ll pipe one live on an empty sheet.
- A half-batch baked (to pretend it is the prior batch coming out of the oven).
- A half-batch fully done and plated for the end.
The last two half-batches can be done as one batch since both will be baked. The piping bag will contain whatever is left after piping a sheet full. I will be using a half-sheet pan because my smaller pans look horrendous (they’re “well seasoned”).
Topping
There are two key points I want to make about whipped cream: Cold and don’t whip it too much. I think three batches will do it:
- A third-batch to pretend to make live.
- A third-batch to use on the meringue “out of the oven” (and miraculously cooled).
- A third-batch for the fully done and plated set.
I’m going to do the cute little flags again, so I will need sliced strawberries and blueberries, but most will be already on the completed set. For props, a couple of whole strawberries and some blueberries in a custard cup to start and enough cut strawberry pieces to do one flag.
Flow / Outline
Very short Introduction.
Hello friends! Tonight we are going to make a very simple summer dessert that many of you may not have heard of: Pavlova. It has only three ingredients and bakes at 200 degrees – hardly stressing the air conditioning.
Talk about mise en place while pulling the placed stuff into camera view – including electric whisk and empty bowls.
Having everything ready beforehand makes baking, and cooking, much easier. The French call this “mise en place”. Americans often abbreviate that to “placing”.
Here we have the meringue: eggs, powdered sugar, cream of tartar, and cornstarch. And a mixing bowl and piping bag.
And the whipped cream: cream and powdered sugar. And a mixing bowl.
And the fruit topping: Strawberries and blueberries. And cutting board and knife.
Show both means of separating eggs. That means two eggs placed, both can get dumped into the mixing bowl.
The most important thing about baking with eggs is that they be at room temperature so they combine easily with the other ingredients; dissolving the sugar in this case.
We only want the whites. There are two ways to do this: With the shell (demonstrate), which runs the risk of breaking the yolk or dropping it into the already separated whites, or fishing the yolks out later (crack the other one into the bowl and grab out the yolk), which is messier, but simpler.
Dry hands – need a towel handy! Dump in all the dry ingredients, which are placed in one bowl. Put the whisk in the bowl.
Whisk until soft peaks then add the dry ingredients and whisk until stiff.
Turn around, grabbing the complete bowl from below. Show “stiff peaks”.
Look at that, stiff peaks already.
Grab piping bag from below, put one spoonful into the (already filled) piping bag, and
Spoon it into the piping bag; over a glass like this is a good method.
Pipe one.
We’re going to do rectangles for speed, but any shape you can imagine – and manage to pipe – is possible. Note the ridge around the outside to keep the whipped cream where it belongs.
Pull the full sheet from off camera and put in the oven. Set a 1 minute timer.
While it bakes for an hour then cools for an hour, you will have plenty of time to prepare the fruit.
Point out the cutting board with pre-cut strawberries.
And making the whipped cream. The most important part of whipping cream is chill. The cream and bowl should both be cold, these are both just out of the ‘fridge.
Pour everything in a chilled bowl and fake-whisk it
Like the meringue, you want the cream to start forming peaks before adding the sugar then whisk to stiff peaks.
Switch to the whipped bowl.
but don’t overwhip it; it will start to turn into butter.
Timer goes off. “Oh look, they’re done”. Pull out the done ones. “and already cool!”
All the remains is to put it together.
Grab a meringue, spoon whipped cream on it, flatten with offset spatula
if you bake, you need one of these; they’re so handy
Arrange fruit.
As we finish them, put them on a serving plate
Pull out the completed set. Bite into the one just decorated.
A light and refreshing desert for summer. Too bad this is online and I cannot share.
That’s six scheduled minutes, giving me a minute for slop. This is Monday night, so that means that tomorrow I need to make an end-to-end batch to have the done ones and a sheet of the baked meringue. Monday after work and before the contest I’ll whip up the cream and meringue and pre-pipe a sheet-but-for-one.
That also means that tomorrow I need to buy strawberries, blueberries, and a quart of whipping cream. I have everything else.
Right now, I need to print this out and time a dry run.
Update: I was so worried about running long that I rushed. I came up short and was disqualified. I haven’t seen the video, yet, but I think it may be awful. The pavlovas are good, though.
Marked Up 