Berry Pavlova Parfaits

* Winner of St. Louis' "West Newsmagazine's Summer Recipes" Contest 2013

I have lots of strawberries and wanted/needed to do something with them. I thought about a jelly roll kind of cake and then decided on Pavlova, but I just want small portions. I used Greek yogurt as the base for a creamy filling rather than whipped cream, but you could sure use whipped cream if you want. You could even use frozen berries—I won’t tell a soul. I want to say that I’ve heard this kind of parfait called Eton Mess before, but I could be mistaken.

This is really very, very easy and pretty and sweet and it’s low fat. What’s not to love?

Ingredients:

For meringue:
3 egg whites brought to room temperature (be sure to not have any egg yolk at all in the whites)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1 teaspoon raspberry flavored liquor (such as Chambord), orange liqueur (like Grand Marnier) or vanilla

For the Fruit:

3 cups sliced strawberries
1 1/2 cups blackberries
2 Tablespoons granulated sugar
1 Tablespoon raspberry flavored liqueur (or orange liquor if you used that before. If you used vanilla, just skip this part)

For the creamy filling:
1 ½ cups plain or vanilla flavored Greek yogurt
1/3  cup light cream cheese
2 Tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:

Get a mixing bowl very clean to beat your egg whites in. Me, I usually take my clean stand mixer bowl and rub a little kosher salt and white vinegar in it to make sure it is free of grease. Then I rinse it in clean water and it’s good to go. In a small bowl, thoroughly mix the 1 cup sugar and cornstarch together. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and spray with cooking spray. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F. Now that all that is done, you are ready to rock!

The meringue: Start beating your egg whites until you just get some volume going (a stand mixer with a balloon whisk attachment is great here, but you can also use a regular mixer or whisk the egg whites by hand). Then start adding the sugar mixture a little at a time, beat again, add more sugar….you get the picture. You want to end up with peaks that are glossy and hold up, but aren’t too dry. Add in your 1 teaspoon of liquor and whisk once more. Spoon our your meringue onto the baking sheet and smooth out so that it is about 1 inch thick all over. Don’t worry about the shape, because you will be breaking it into pieces later. Place in the oven and bake for 1 hour. When the hour is up, turn off the oven and crack the oven door, leaving the meringue in the oven another hour to dry.

The berries: While the meringue is baking, mix the berries, the 2 TB of sugar and the tablespoon of liquor. Let stand until needed.

Make the creamy filling by beating together the Greek yogurt, light cream cheese, 1 tsp. vanilla and 2 TB of sugar. Refrigerate until ready to use. Note: this will not be as thick as whipped cream, but you can reduce the amount of Greek yogurt to get a thicker consistency if you want. If you do, you might want to cut back on the sugar, too.

When the meringue is cool, break it into bite size pieces.

Make individual parfaits by layering berries, meringue, filling, and repeating until you reach the top of the dish you are using. Don’t make them too far in advance, though, or the meringue will get sticky.

Yield: Depends on how you layer your parfaits. I think that you can easily make 8 parfaits in stemless wineglasses if you go light on the berries.