The Great Atlassian Bake Off | Pavlova Show-Stopper

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For the Great Atlassian Bake Off, I shared the details with my family since we watch the Great British Bake Off and they were so excited about this competition! They researched the best white and blue dessert options, creative ways to display the final baking showpiece as well as how to incorporate our cat, Allie, for bonus points.  So we put our heads together and came up with this beautiful creation: 

We made a Pavlova with blueberries and mint using this recipe from Natasha's Kitchen. Grandma had mentioned that she had Pavlova once at a hotel in Scotland and we loved the color and shape options we could go with for this type of dessert. None of us had ever made this fluffy treat but we were up for the challenge. 

We had some highs:

1) Two of my sisters-in-law's set up the most adorable mini-kitchen set to display our final creation as well as serve as a great workspace for our sous chef, Chef Allie the cat. They cut up little lemons, filled the mini piping bag with meringue, poured the liquid items from the recipe into teeny-tiny measuring cups, and wrote down a mini pavlova recipe for the cat to follow along with us. 

2) We learned some great tips from Grandma during this bake. From how to fold parchment paper on a baking tray more efficiently to create clean lines to putting cold eggs in water to help them get to room temperature before cracking them open, this round of baking in the family kitchen was chalked full of great tips!

3) We really enjoyed piping the meringue and went a little off-script from what the recipe stated the size and shape of the meringue nests should be, but that's okay! We created the Atlassian symbol and little dots that we later stacked together to create little snowmen. If you make this recipe, this is a very easy to manipulate meringue so it can be used for any baking occasion!

We had some lows: 

1) We might have put half and half in instead of heavy whipping cream for the whipped cream so, after 10 minutes of nothing fluffing up in the mixer, we discovered that the brand new, bought for this bake, heavy whipping cream container was unopened...so we fixed that it had whipped cream in a matter of minutes. 

2) Chef Allie was very focused on the bake and we struggled to get pictures of her looking at us but we so respect her devotion to this show-stopper challenge creation.

 But in the end, the pavlovas were the perfect texture, the blueberries, whipped cream, and fresh mint that we used as toppings added a hint of freshness that paired well with the sweet meringue. Thank you to Atlassian for sharing this competition! My family and I so enjoyed our time in the kitchen working on this and we hope to part take in the next #AtlassianBakeoff! Happy Holiday!