May 18, 2011: Pav cups

Last Tuesday our mate Toby became an Australian citizen, and there was a small barbecue held in his honour on the following night.  We started out with gleegan-friendly cheese and vegemite on toast then moved on to a very 'meaty' main - sausages in bread, rissoles with canned beetroot, party pies and much tomato sauce (as well as some less-obviously-Aussie but no-less-delicious marinated tofu).

For dessert there was trifle and gleegan-suitable Kingston biscuits and Tim Tams.  I tried my hand at individual vegan pavlovas with a lot of help from a couple of pre-packaged groceries - Angel Food's meringue cookie mix and Soyatoo! Soy Whip.

Vegan meringue certainly warranted hauling out the ol' KitchenAid for some serious whipping.  I'm not sure that I got quite enough air into the mixture, as this modest quantity was supposed to make 24 cookies each 5cm in diameter, but the flavour and texture were quite remarkable - very marshmallowy and a bit sticky-gooey-gluey.

I spooned the goop into eleven cupcake papers and was rather excited - they looked pretty darn impressive!

Alas, I almost certainly baked them too long.  In my enthusiasm for crunchy edges, I ended up with nothing but!  My meringues were more like hollowed-out sugar shells.

Of course, hollowed-out shells make pretty great vessels for cream, so I just filled these up with canned passionfruit pulp and Soy Whip.  In all their fragility, we needed teaspoons to eat them.  These weren't quite pavlovas but they looked the part and had most of the elements they needed - cool cream, sour fruit and a little sugary crispness... just not enough cloudy meringue.