Pavlovas always make for striking desserts at any table, but they do need a long time to dry out in the oven and can crack all too easily. If you need a more reliable option in a hurry, then why not try some personal pavlovas? This recipe features a vanilla flavoured meringue, prosecco whipped cream and is topped with a variety of berries, making it ideal as a light summer dessert!
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Personal Prosecco Pavlovas
SWEET.
LIGHT.
CRISP
SWEET.LIGHT.CRISP
- Gluten-Free!
Pavlovas always make for striking desserts at any table, but they do need a long time to dry out in the oven and can crack all too easily. So if you need a more reliable option in a hurry, then why not try some personal pavlovas?
Being smaller, they can be dried much more quickly and effectively; plus, if you’re feeling really fancy, you can customise the toppings and decor of each meringue shell to appeal to each guest!
As an added bonus, this recipe also comes in handy when you’re not exactly sure how many people you’ll have turning up to eat, as any unneeded meringue shells can be kept unfilled in an airtight container for a couple of weeks!
This recipe features a vanilla flavoured meringue, prosecco whipped cream and is topped with a variety of berries, making it ideal as a light summer dessert!
In a hurry? Then here’s your recipe!
If you like to see some more tips and tricks, then scroll away for a bit of light reading!
Personal Prosecco Pavlovas
Course: DessertCuisine: MeringueDifficulty: MediumServings
6
servingsPrep time
1
hour15
minutesCooking time
50
minutesIngredients
- For the meringue:
4 medium egg whites (approx. 135g)
270g caster sugar (see notes below)
- For the prosecco syrup:
50ml prosecco
35g caster sugar
- For the cream:
300ml double cream
All of your prosecco syrup
30g icing sugar
- For the topping:
Your favourite fruits / berries! I used blackberries, blueberries, blackcurrants and redcurrants.
Mint leaves, to decorate (optional)
- Equipment:
Stand mixer (or at least an electric whisk)
3 piping bags
2 gel food colourings, in colours of your choice!
Directions
- For the meringue:
- Place your egg whites in clean stand mixer bowl and whisk them at a medium speed until small bubbles begin to cluster over their surface.
- Increase the speed to medium-high and wait until the egg whites have been whipped into soft peak stage. You should see that they have formed a "dense" foam and once the whisk is removed, there should be a small peak of egg white left behind that quickly flops over.
- Start whisking the egg whites again at medium speed, but gently pour in a tablespoon of sugar as you start. Wait 10 seconds, then continue to add the sugar a tablespoon at a time at 10 second intervals until all of the sugar has been added.
- Once the sugar has been added, turn the mixer up to high speed and whisk it for 5 - 10 minutes or until the sugar has been fully dissolved. To check if the sugar is dissolved, scoop out a small amount of the meringue and rub it between your thumb and forefinger. If it feels smooth, then the meringue is ready! If it feels a little grainy, then continue whisking for another minute or so and retest.
- Preheat the oven to 120C / 100C fan, letting the oven warm up while you pipe your design!
- Piping the meringues:
- NOTE: If you'd like a picture guide to help you with any of these steps, take a look further down the page for more detail!
- Separate half of the meringue into a separate bowl. Add a little of one of your food colourings to this bowl, and little of your other colour to the original bowl. Gently whisk the food colouring into the meringue until you achieve a uniform colour in each!
- Add each bowl of meringue to a separate piping bag and cut the tip off of each one. Place both bags into a third piping bag with a closed star tip nozzle fitted.
- Line a baking tray with baking paper. Draw 6 circles onto the paper around 8.5cm in diameter (I draw around the top of a pint glass!), then flip the paper over so that you can see the drawn circle templates through it.
- Stick the paper to the baking tray by piping a small blob of meringue underneath each corner. Inside each circle, pipe a rosette of meringue, leaving a roughly 5mm border between the meringue and the edge of the circle. Then, pipe a ring of meringue on the rosette, forming a wall around its edge and a well in the center we can fill later!
- Pipe a ring of meringue blobs around the perimeter of the meringue shell, filling the 0.5cm border we left empty earlier. Pipe a second ring of meringue blobs just above the first ring to cover the entirety of the outside of the meringue shell.
- Baking the meringues:
- Once all of the meringues have been piped in this way, place them in the oven for 50 minutes to bake, or until the meringues can be easily and cleanly lifted from the baking paper. Switch off the oven and leave the meringues inside to cool slowly.
- For the prosecco syrup:
- Add the prosecco and caster sugar to a small saucepan and stir until the sugar is largely dissolved. Place the pan over a medium heat and allow to simmer for around 8 minutes, or until the syrup is noticeably reduced.
- Pour the syrup into a heatproof bowl and place in the fridge to chill and thicken up further.
- To fill and assemble:
- Place the cream and cooled prosecco syrup into the bowl of a stand mixer, or into a large mixing bowl, and sift in the icing sugar. Whisk it all together until the cream forms stiff peaks.
- Spoon or pipe the cream into the cooled meringue shells and top with your fruit / berries and mint leaves!
Notes
- The basic recipe for French meringue is 2:1 parts caster sugar to egg white. Therefore, I'd suggest weighing your egg whites, then multiply that weight by 2 to calculate exactly how much caster sugar you'll need!
Making meringue!
If you'd like a bit of guidance in making marvelous meringue, then check out the tutorial below! This recipe uses French meringue, which is usually seen as the easiest kind to make, so this is the perfect time for a newbie to get stuck in!
Perfect piping!
As with any grand design, getting the foundations right is important for a great end result! In this case, before you do any piping, you'll want to be sure of two things: that your meringue is the right consistency and that you have the correct piping tip to hand!
The meringue needs to have been whisked to stiff peak stage, so that it is able to hold it's shape once piped. If you have followed the recipe above, then it should definitely have already reached this point, since we will have whisked the meringue at high speed for a good 5 - 10 minutes. If you'd like to check it though, run a whisk through the meringue to gather some of it up and flip the whisk upside-down; if there is a small spike of meringue sticking from the whisk that doesn't flop over, then that's the perfect stiff peak! Alternatively, if you're feeling brave, you can try holding the bowl of meringue upside-down over your head! If the meringue doesn't slide out and cover you in a sugary nightmare, then it's ready to use!
Here you can see stiff peaks sticking up from and underneath the spoon, indicating that it’s ready to pipe!
As for the piping tip, you’ll want to use a large, closed star nozzle like the one pictured below! You can tell that the nozzle is “closed tip” by the fact that the points on the end of the nozzle curve into the center, rather than sticking straight up into the air.
Once you have your meringue ready, you can split half of it into a separate bowl and colour both bowls as you wish! Honestly, go wild at this point, but remember that lighter shades will be easier to achieve than darker ones, due to the whiteness of the meringue.
Fit one of your piping bags with the nozzle you selected earlier and fill the other two with your meringue, one colour per bag. Then, cut a hole in the end of your filled piping bags and slide them side by side into the nozzled bag. It would be easiest if you used a larger piping bag to contain the other two, but you can still pull this off with 3 bags the same size: just make sure you don’t overfill the bags to prevent the contents spilling out of the top!
For a more cost effective / environmentally friendly option, you can also try using just one piping bag, placed into a glass with the top folded outwards to keep the bag open. Fill one side of the bag with one colour of meringue, before filling the other half with the other colour, spooning it in as carefully as you can for a neater seperation between the colours. However, be warned, meringue is very sticky, so this method could be a bit tricky to pull off!
Once you have a bag of meringue, you can start piping! Hold the piping bag vertically so that it points straight down to the counter and position it around 1cm above the lined baking tray you are baking the meringues on. Using continuous, even pressure, pipe a rosette swirl into one of the circles you’ve drawn on the baking paper, starting from just inside the perimeter of the circle and working your way into the center in one smooth motion.
Once done, pipe a circle on top of the rosette, creating a wall on its perimeter with a well in the middle that will hold the fillings later!
The first picture shows the first perimeter wall being piped, while the second shows you the difference once all 6 have been piped!
For the frilly / spiky pattern on the outside of the meringue shell, hold the piping bag at a 45° degree angle to the baking tray and pipe a ring of blobs around the outside of the meringue, which should fill the last of the space in the circle template you drew earlier. Then, pipe a second ring of blobs above the first, piping each blob between two of those on the bottom row so that the top ring is slightly offset from the bottom.
Pipe the first ring of blobs as shown in the first picture, after which it should look a little like the second image!
Pipe the second ring of blobs on top of the meringue, just inside the perimeter of the first ring. Once done, you should be left with something like in the second image!
Repeat this process for the remaining 5 meringue nests, giving you 5 fun designs ready for the oven!!
Marvelous meringues, perfect for peckish people! I hope you enjoy this recipe, let me know if you’d like any questions answered!
Also, if you’re social media savvy, tag me on Instagram at @toofarfletched with your creations!
-Tom 
Comments
Tom
Hi! Thanks for stopping by!
I set up this site to share with you everything I love about baking, so hopefully there’ll be something here you enjoy too!
If you’d like to get in touch, feel free to use the links below!
I set up this site to share with you everything I love about baking, so hopefully there’ll be something here you enjoy too!
If you’d like to get in touch, feel free to use the links below!
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Personal Prosecco Pavlovas
Pavlovas always make for striking desserts at any table, but they do need a long time to dry out in the oven and can crack all too easily. If you need a more reliable option in a hurry, then why not try some personal pavlovas? This recipe features a vanilla flavoured meringue, prosecco whipped cream and is topped with a variety of berries, making it ideal as a light summer dessert!
