Mini Raspberry Pavlovas

My fascination with little pastries continues here at Pink Piccadilly Pastries and today I bring you some delicious Mini Raspberry Pavlovas. They are similar to the French Bonbons I made recently, but are even better! They have a pound cake base in the form of a mini cupcake, topped with lightly sweetened whipped cream, topped with a meringue cookie disc, and finally finished with a drizzle of Raspberry Coulis, fresh raspberries and a sprinkling of powdered sugar!! Phew!! But seriously, they are not difficult! Really! You can do this! 

My success with my French Bonbons gave me courage to try this recipe, which appeared in Hello Magazine (see photo from magazine below.) Since their recipe doesn't tell you how to make the cakes or meringues or raspberry coulis etc, I had to pretty much come up with a new recipe myself.

The most difficult part of this recipe for me was making the raspberries stay put!! My raspberries were on the large side, and it was difficult placing three on top. I could have gone with one raspberry, but it wouldn't have looked as nice.

So now I'll show you how to make these yummy pastries!

The first thing I did (actually the night before) was bake the mini pound cakes. (photo above shows baked cakes) Not really knowing what I was doing, I decided to go easy on myself and use a box mix! I've never made a pound cake from a mix, but this really turned out perfect for the recipe I was doing. This is the mix I used......

First I placed mini cupcake papers in 2 mini muffins pans. Next I went right by the directions for the pound cake mixture, then used my mini cookie scoop to drop the mixture into the papers. (fill about 2/3 full)  Since the directions don't come with baking time for mini cupcakes, I guessed at the time and 14 minutes was just right.

While the pound cakes are baking, start making the meringue discs. The photo above shows the meringues after piping. Since they had a little tip on the top, I pushed those down using a damp finger. I used the same recipe/technique as I showed you in my French Bonbons post. And again, I used my ever so helpful template to help me pipe the discs. Just make sure to remove the template before baking. I have actually used my template for my last three posts! I placed a cooked pound cake on the template to get an idea how big the discs should be piped. When piping these, you want discs, not mounds. You need a flat surface to set your raspberries on.

Here are what the baked meringues look like. After you bake your pound cakes and meringues, let them cool completely while you make the raspberry coulis. And for this, I used Martha Stewart's recipe. Raspberry Coulis just sounds like something that's going to be difficult to make, but it's not! All you need are some raspberries and sugar!

Just cook the raspberries and sugar down until you have a nice syrupy mixture, let it cool, then strain it. (I meant to show you a photo of the syrup but forgot to take the picture!)

OK, you've got your cakes, meringues and coulis cooling (coulis cooling!), now you going to whip the cream! Using a chilled bowl with chilled beaters, beat one pint heavy cream and 1/3 cup powdered sugar until stiff peaks. Now we're going to begin to put the pastries together. First, fill a piping bag with some of the cream (use any type of plain round tip) and pipe a circle of the whipped cream on top of the pound cakes. (photo above)

Next, place a meringue disc on top of the whipped cream. 

Then drizzle a generous teaspoon of raspberry coulis on top of the meringue discs. This will help the raspberries stay put. Also, if you waited to drizzle the coulis after the raspberries were placed on top, the berries would be wet and your powdered sugar would melt.

Now you're going to top the meringue discs with three raspberries, (Hopefully small ones), then sprinkle some powdered sugar over the tops of the raspberries. How pretty are these?! They taste even better than they look!!

This isn't a very good photo, but you get the idea! Yum! They are like a wonderful little raspberry shortcake topped with a meringue cookie! My kids loved them! If you would like to try these, just click on the links for my meringue recipe and Martha's Raspberry Coulis recipe, and make the cakes using the directions on the box. If you have any questions, just leave me a comment and I'll get back to you! Hope you enjoyed! Have a great day!

I'm sharing my pastries with Sandi at Rose Chintz Cottage for Teatime Tuesday! I think these Raspberry Pavlovas would go lovely with a cup of tea, don't you?!