Listen to Our Latest Bake Club Podcast, All About Pavlova

ON THIS WEEK’S episode, senior Test Kitchen editors Shilpa Uskokovic and Jesse Szewczyk are back with Bake Club’s latest winter bake: Shilpa’s Boozy Cherry and Chocolate Pavlova, an impressive dessert that combines two beloved classics into one celebratory treat.

Inspired by her childhood favorite— the black forest gâteau—Shilpa takes us through the process of combining the two desserts into one fun bake. She takes the decadent flavor profile of classic black forest cake and reimagines it into a crisp yet marshmallowy pavlova topped with all the goodies. (Boozy cherries, chocolate, and the adorning curls!) Though the ingredients might be simple, creating a perfectly crisp yet marshmallowy pavlova that’s stark white and lofty can be challenging. But have no fear, Shilpa has created a recipe that makes creating a picture-perfect pavlova far easier than you might imagine.

They also speak to 2025 James Beard award-winning cookbook author and creator of the popular and endlessly informative Substack “Kitchen Projects,” Nicola Lamb, who offers creative solutions as to what to do with your leftover egg yolks.

Listen now to hear more about this month’s bake that is destined to wow!

SU: It needs to be very softly whipped. I will say this. Don’t make your cream very stiff because you want that velvety mouth feel and texture over that crisp pavlova shell. I think that really works well as a contrast. And the most important thing about the whipped cream is that it’s not sweetened at all in any way because the pavlova shell is so sweet. Think about the sugar. We put double the amount of sugar, then egg whites. So it’s so sweet and having this blanket of unsweetened cream on top really works well to bring everything together. So unsweetened cream, and then you have your chocolate ganache on top and you just drizzle, drizzle the chocolate ganache on top, pile the cream, pile the cherries on top. I like to keep the cherries separate from the syrup and then pour the syrup right before it hits the table so it doesn’t muddy the whipped cream. And my favorite part is creating the chocolate curls on top. And for this… Wait, I feel like you need to speak about this.

SU: I would say that everything stays the same in terms of what ingredients you’re using to make the syrup, but you might have to just keep an eye on your cook time. You might actually need to cook the cherries a bit longer in the syrup initially because since they’re fresh, they’re tougher in a way. They’re juicier and they’ll take a little bit of time to break. When you freeze cherries and then you thaw them in the context of making this, that freeze saw cycle ruptures the cell walls of the cherry and helps things break down a bit faster, but with fresh cherries, they can be quite firm to begin with. So you can need to cook them a little bit longer and then the rest of the recipe stays the same. You still remove them, set them aside, and then continue to cook the syrup down.

NL: To be honest, it was a time when all of the kitchens had closed. So it was a moment of needing something to do that felt meaningful and felt connected. I think one thing that food has always done has connected people, whether that’s having lunch with friends or cooking for your family. So in absence of that, it felt really precious and exciting to be able to cook all together and to provide a bit of structure to people’s lives. So that was a amazing project. And when I was going on my book tour last year and this year, there were so many people who came up to me and said, “Oh my gosh, we did the Puff course.” And it was so special. And I’d always give them a huge hug and say, “Thank you.” Because it was really something that helped me number one, go into the work that I do now, which is more teaching and learning and learning along with other people.

NL: I felt quite strongly about what I wanted the book to be. And I do think it ended up being quite true to what I wanted, which is a modern reference book that marries together a traditional textbook-style pastry book, which I loved. And I always felt that baking books lived on the two ends of an extreme spectrum. They either lived on a very technical books which weren’t particularly enjoyable to spend a lot of time in, as in they had not great design compared to other baking books and they’d be quite dense in terms of their information. And the recipes would be for 20 kilos of croissant dough. And then on the other end of the spectrum, you’d have books which were a hundred beautiful recipes, which I love. And I have both of those books. So I always wanted to find a way to be somewhere halfway with Sift, which I think we achieved.

NL: I think cracking is probably the most stressful thing that can happen with meringue because I think you have this vision of what it’s going to be like. You’ve spent all this time whipping the egg whites, you spent all this time incorporating the sugar and you’ve followed everything perfectly. And then just when you think that I’m here, I’ve made it, I’m safe. Look at this stunning concoction I’ve made. And then you come back two hours later and it’s weeping or it’s bleeding and it’s really gutting. And that’s one of the things you have to learn is that cracking does happen. And actually you have to have that Japanese mindset about it that sometimes cracks are very beautiful and they shouldn’t be… It doesn’t mean that your meringue has failed. It’s just there could be a million reasons why it’s happened. And I think that people can be really hard on themselves about the cracking, especially when it’s been such a journey to get to it.