An Aussie Christmas: Decorating our pavlovas

Thursday 13th of December 2018

Although Christmas in Australia share British and American similarities and traditions, the warmer weather makes the festive season down under a unique experience, and when it comes to Christmas cuisine, Australia has put it’s own spin on classic European recipes. Whether you enjoy lunch on the veranda with shrimp on the Barbie, or prefer to carve turkey in the dining room, Australian silly season foods really showcase the best of Australian fresh foods and creativity.

Pavlova is an Australian favourite. It’s a simple and versatile dessert that can be shaped in any form and dressed year round with the best seasonal fruit. It is basically a delicate mountain of whipped meringue. For a dessert with quite an impressive appearance (and taste), it is ridiculously easy to create. Given how busy we are becoming, we decided to stick with simply decorating a good quality pavlova with some great toppings like, kiwifruit, strawberries, blueberries, cream and a grated mint crisp bar. Yummo!

We figured that treating ourselves to Pavlova would be a good way to incorporate aspects of Christmas into the setting. Not only did it look like Christmas but it tasted like it too. The beauty of this festive dessert was that it could be made ahead in time for our Christmas party…however it didn’t last long at all.

Eating such Aussie classics prompted us to read an Aussie classic with Possum Magic. If you have read Possum Magic, you will know that Hush needed to eat a piece of pavlova (as well as a vegemite sandwich and a lamington) to make her visible again. Reading a few books while digging into our airy marshmallow like cake was the best way to spend our morning.

The skills gained from such experiences include:

+ Bilateral coordination: Developing good bilateral coordination skills can help children to tie shoelaces, cut with scissors and draw a line with a ruler. Cooking experience provide your child with lots of opportunities to develop and use the hands in a coordinated way. Sifting the sugar onto the Pavlova was a good bilateral activity and it trained our children to use one hand to support while the other does the heavy work.

+ Eye-hand coordination: Decorating our Pavlovas with cream also uses eye-hand movements. Creating our own icing bag was super easy to make and the easiest way to allow children to decorate the Pavlova with minimum mess. Depending on hand strength we encouraged the children to use one or two hands and even the tripod fingers.

+ Spatial perception and planning skills: There should always be a recipe involved when arranging cakes. We read the recipe ourselves in words and in pictures and they were also able to follow verbal instructions. Following a recipe can boost the children’s listening and sequencing skills. Helping our children to organise themselves and their space is an important life skill and we encouraged them to “clean up as you go” and remember to pack away all the ingredients afterwards.

+ Mathematics: Such experiences provide exposure to maths skills with measuring and about number concepts in real life.

What are your thoughts? What should the next cooking experience be?