Pav-love-a

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 completed my 2nd challenge as a "Daring Baker" and it was not only fun, but also super rich and delicious.  For all of you chocolate lovers out there, I highly recommend this chocolate mousse, as well as the crunchy/crisp pavlova.  The pavlova is a traditional Australian dessert and can be had in various forms of meringue, but is usually topped with some sort of cream and berries.  While generally not being a fan of overly sweet meringues, this chocolate pavlova recipe, with the addition of Callebaut cocoa powder, is truly decadent.  Making the pavlova is actually quite simple with only 4 ingredients: egg whites, granulated sugar, powdered sugar, and cocoa powder.  Here is the "batter" before piping into rounds on parchment paper:

The entire batter could be formed into one cake shape round or piped into individual servings, which is what I did:

I then tried my hand at making homemade mascarpone to add to the mousse, and it was easier than I thought.  Here is how you can do it.  I had trouble with using the indirect heating method, and ended up putting my bowl right on top of the burner with a low flame.  Even with the slight technique alteration, it turned out thick and creamy the next morning!  The mascarpone also was added to a creme anglaise as a drizzling sauce over the chocolate dessert.  

Since I had plentiful strawberries from Shepherd Farms I again topped the dessert with a fanned out strawberry.  Mmm...delish!  

A bonus is having leftovers, including enough mascarpone cream to make an ice cream.  Jason and I enjoyed parfaits layered with the mouse, mascarpone ice cream, crumbled pavlovas, and strawberries!  I think we have enough for one more parfait tonight...hooray!

For the recipe, click here.