When I visited legendary pastry chef Dominique Ansel’s eponymous bakery in New York a few weeks ago (I wrote about the adventure and the subsequent canelé experiments in my previous post), I managed to get my paws on a raspberry and lychee pavlova. One of the staff members had told me it was her favourite dessert in the pastry display case and, since it was also the most eye-catching one, I had to try it.
Ansel’s website describes the raspberry and lychee pavlova as “light-as-air lychee meringue filled with fresh raspberries, raspberry jam, mascarpone whipped ganache, and lychee whipped ganache.” The pastry was splendid; the meringue was crunchy on the outside but chewy on the inside, with just the lightest hints of lychee flavour. The ganaches complemented the raspberries wonderfully.