pavlova with raspberry, fig leaf custard, and whipped cream (gf)

last month in london i had this delicious panna cotta flavored with fig leaf and topped with strawberries (which you can read about here). i loved the combo so much that i decided to make a berry and fig leaf dessert when i returned home. then, while in italy a few weeks later, i saw all of these bakeries with gorgeous, large meringue clouds in their windows. i combined these two things to make the recipe i’m sharing today, a meringue blob hollowed out, filled with fig leaf custard and raspberries, and topped with whipped cream. 

meringue-based desserts are one of my favorite things to make. it is so fun to pipe a design, bake it, and have it hold its shape. because meringue is both light and super sturdy (when made properly), you can get a lot of height and build some pretty fun shapes. i have made a lot of meringue over the last few years and have picked up some tricks which you will see in the recipe below. 

not only do i love how this dessert looks, but it’s also so fun in texture and taste. the custard is somewhere between set and gooey, and it slowly spills onto the plate once the meringue is cracked open. pairing the custard with the crispy/crunchy/melt-in-your-mouth meringue, the burst of the raspberries, and the airy whipped cream, provides the most divine textures. taste-wise, the meringue is simply sweet (plus a little salty from the pinch of flakey salt), but the sweetness is tempered by those raspberries, the eggy and vanilla-y fig leaf custard, and the subtle smooth taste of plain cream. 

i am sharing two different ways to assemble the dish; you can either pile the blobs up in ascending order to make one tall dessert, or you could pipe blobs of approximately the same size and do individually plated desserts (5-8 servings - depending on how big you want them to be - 8 servings will produce a more appropriate size, but you can make them so big and fun if you do 5 servings). i have directions for both below. 

both the large version and the individual servings have their pros and cons. the large one is quite dramatic and the large wells in the center mean you have a great ratio of meringue to custard to cream to fruit. the individual ones are certainly easier for your guests to eat, but the wells inside the dessert are smaller and thus you’ll need to serve the extra custard and fruit on the side of the plate. 

p.s. you can make the custard the day before you serve it to save time. just pop it into the fridge overnight.

substitutions: if you cannot find fig leaves, skip them and replace them with vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste. i’m sure peach leaves would also be delicious here, but please do your research before using them in this dish!