Ice Cream Cake

Sin no more: Pavlova is both rich and light

10.07.11

THERE'S LITTLE in this world I'm as dead set against as diet-friendly desserts. If I'm on a diet (which, let's face it, in this line of work I frequently am), I skip dessert. If I want dessert, the last thing I can abide is rubbery angel food cake or the noxious feat of chemical engineering called "light" ice cream.

For many years I lumped meringue in this category, too — not, of course, when it tops a lemon pie or provides the backbone to a cream-laden semifreddo, but when it's baked to a crisp and served as-is: chalky and vapid. Like most desserts touted as the way for the weight-conscious to have our cake and eat it, too, I never felt meringue was worth even the few fat-free calories it contains.

All that was before I tasted pavlova, though. Pavlova is to meringue what foie gras is to liverwurst: such an improvement on the concept that it's hard to believe the two are related. Furthermore, in pavlova's case, the lack of fat is a benefit rather than a liability, because it allows you to dispense with the guilt you'd normally feel at consuming such an obscenely large amount of whipped cream. Think of it as the dessert equivalent of ordering a diet soda with your double bacon cheeseburger. It doesn't exactly make the whole thing healthful, but at least you feel more virtuous.

Source: The Seattle Times