Chocolate Raspberry Pavlova

A few months ago on twitter, I was talking with another hockey blogger, Chris from The Hockey Program about our love of cooking. He already had a food blog that he had posted to and had at the time asked for suggestions of things to make. I had said that I would send some ideas, but then time passed and I never got around to it.

Then I spent over a month away from my kitchen this summer, and realized how much I missed it. So after a few e-mails I challenged my hockey blogger friend to make a recipe I suggested. Maybe he will, maybe he won't but this is my attempt at the recipe that was sent to him.

The recipe is from Nigella Lawson's book Forever Summer and the recipe is a Chocolate Raspberry Pavlova which can be found at the Food Network website.

When I think of pavlova's, I knew they were similar to meringue but more chewy in texture. This recipe is surprisingly easy, and if all pavlova's are similar, then despite the name's foreign sound making it sound complicated, well it's dead easy.

And if you are wondering where the name came from, a pavlova is a meringue based dessert that was named after a Russian ballet dancer Anna Pavlova.

So how did I do?

After whipping the egg whites and sugar into a meringue, chopped chocolate and cocoa powder was folded in.
Then the meringue was mounded onto a baking sheet with parchment.
And then smoothed out with a spatula before being put in the oven.

The finished product with fresh berries and juicy peaches from the Okanagan looked like this:
Which went really well with some of this:Or at least the ladies who enjoyed this dessert with me thought so...