Spring pavlova

This is the Sunday lunch dessert I mentioned last week. If you are not familiar with pavlova, it is a (maybe the) quintessential antipodean dessert, claimed by both Australia and New Zealand and named after a Russian ballet dancer, Anna Pavlova. There are recipes for pavlova available all over the internet (here’s a good one), so I’m not going to re-invent the wheel. The important information to absorb is that meringue + whipped cream + fruit = pavlova, and that you can play around with the combinations.

Working with that formula, I decided to take advantage of what was in season and in my kitchen. So I used citrus sugar in both the meringue and the cream; chopped up fresh strawberries from the farmers’ market for the topping; and, best of all, spread a layer of cumquat curd between the meringue and the cream for an extra hit of fruit flavor. I can’t remember now where I read this suggestion, but I feel certain a layer of curd will be a non-negotiable step in my pavlova-making process from now on.