Mini Lemon Shortbread Pavlova

Or, Lemon Meringue Shooters I guess you could call them!

Recently I was the cakerer for a sweet baby shower and made these as the 4th dessert to accompany the Almond & Orange cake, Ombre White Chocolate mudcakes, and Anzac Blondies. 

There are three components to assemble these Lemon Shortbread Pavlova's and yep you guessed it, they are 1) lemon curd 2) crushed shortbread biscuits and 3) itty bitty pavlova's. 

The first component - Lemon Curd

Have you heard the thing about curd.... it is delicious! I have always been put of a curd because curd to me doesn't sound all that appetising. But, I am so happy that I overcame my prejudice against curd  because it is actually darn tasty! Not that I can eat citrus, so it isn't much of a breakthrough for me, but still, a little teaspoon of it here and there isn't going to kill me!!

I used the Donna Hay Modern Classics 2 recipe for Lemon Curd and it worked perfectly and was really simple to make.  

Ingredients

1/2 cup of lemon juice

100g butter

1/2 cup of sugar

1 whole egg

3 egg yolks

Method:

1. Place the lemon juice and butter in a saucepan over low heat and stir until the butter has melted. 

2. Whisk the sugar and eggs (whole + yolks) into the butter. 

3. Stir constantly over medium heat until the mixture starts to thicken (about 5 minutes)

The second component - Shortbread base

This is even more simple to make, possibly the most simple thing to make in the kitchen!! Crush whichever biscuits you like (and by biscuits I mean cookies) with melted butter. Done. 

The third component - Pavlova/meringue/cream

Pavlova is an Australian (New Zealand - - depends who you are but there's a bitter feud between our two nations over who first created the pav) dessert that is basically a huge meringue, baked and topped with seasonal fruit and cream. I've been making a lot of Pav's lately, I always forget how easy they are to make! But yet, when we had one of Mr M's friends' over for dinner one night and he was beyond excited about dessert, he reminded me the importance of a gentle fold, something he was never able to achieve, and thus could never make this lighter-than-air dessert!

(Full Pavlova recipe)

Ingredients

3 egg whites

1 cup of sugar

3/4 t cornflour

1 t vanilla

1 t white vinegar

Method:

1. If you have a stand mixer you will find this an easy peasy dessert! You need to beat the egg whites for a few minutes until they start getting white and fluffy. 

2. Start adding in the sugar, bit by bit and beat well in between. You need to beat until stiff peaks form - this means that when you dip a spoon finger in to the fluffiness, you should be able to lift and a peak will be created! It's fun to do!

3. Slowly and very gently fold in the vanilla, cornflour and vinegar. Gently, you don't want to take all of the air out of the eggwhites. 

4. For these shooters, I traced the top of the shot glasses on the piece of baking paper and piped little mounds to fill each circle. 

5. These mini ones were baked for 15 minutes on a low oven. For the full pav instructions, follow this link. 

Assemble by placing the shortbread base in first, then some lemon, repeat and place each pavlova/meringue or alternatively whipped cream, on top! 

I really loved how these turned out. I tried each component separately and they were all delicious, so I can only imagine how tasty it was all in one mouthful!! I think it is a striking dessert for an event or dinner party and something you can mostly prepare a bit ahead of time.