DARING BAKER'S CHALLENGE #7

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

 This month's challenge was TOTALLY AWESOME.
Chocolate Pavlova with Chocolate Mascarpone Mousse.
Could anything sound more extravagantly lush than THAT?


Since I was too lazy to complete the challenge earlier in the month one of my closest friends, Shekinah, was turning 18 on the 24th, I made the pavlova quite late. I thought that being the stingy-poker that I was since there wouldn't be too many of us celebrating (it was a small dinner celebration at this TO DIE FOR steamboat place) I would make half the recipe. I had it all figured out, I'd make all the components the day before and assemble them in the morning before leaving for her house. The mousse and mascarpone cream didn't give me any trouble, but I probably should have remembered it was my VERY FIRST pavlova, and there were BOUND to be hiccups along the way.
And a hiccup there was.
A BIG one.

THAT my good readers, was what the pavlova looked like the next morning. I could BARELY get it off the baking paper, and the parts that DID peel off cracked and crumbled to bits. Looking  back, I probably should have baked it for longer to allow the pav to dry out more. Truth be told though, I was actually quite happy it didn't turn out. It looked a bit TOO SMALL to be given as a present. So, I scrapped it, and tried again. This time making the full meringue recipe. As for the one above, I didn't want to waste it (It tasted REALLY GOOD) So I crumbled it up even more and made 2 little parfaits.

Quite decent, no? And SO YUMMY MY GAWD!!
Anyways, after quickly putting together the stuff for the 2nd meringue (luckily I still had a decent amount of time on my hands) and baking it for 2 and 1/4 hours, I got a BE-YOU-TI-FUL looking pavlova.

I thought about it, and decided to add the finishing touches at her place. So I packed the mousse and cream into piping bags and took the lot to Kynah's house. We had a good long gossip (haven't seen her since she started college) Had a shower, got dressed and dressed the pavlova so it was ready for dinner.

Doesn't it look ADORABLE? I cheated a bit and bought to sugar roses, so the whole thing was dead easy to put together. Kynah and her parents oohed and ahhed over it, the we packed the pav up and headed to the restaurant.

This is where things got a little messy. The pavlova was sitting next to the HOT steamboat stove for about 15 minutes before we thought of moving it to a chair so it would be away from the heat. AND it was about 2 hours (the steamboat was REALLY GOOD,k?) before we got around to eating it. So by the time the pavlova came out of the box....
Let's just say it tasted a lot better than it looked.

Honestly. However, all said and done Kynah LOVED IT.
She thought it was fantastic (and quite frankly, it bloody was). I'll definitely be making this again. Although, I'll probably not subject it to heat next time!
As usual, if you'd like to try the recipe for yourself, it'll be found on The Daring Kitchen's website
And do try to go through the blogroll to see what other Daring bakers thought of the challenge. Bye!