This divine pavlova roulade is filled with vanilla, strawberry and rosewater whipped cream, fresh strawberries and watermelon. It is one of the softest, lightest desserts you can have and perfect for the summer weather with all of the abundant in-season fruit. And unlike a traditional pavlova, pavlova roulade is one of the quickest ways to make pavlova! Usually pavlova takes hours to bake in the oven but this takes just 10 minutes!
The flavour combination is based on the Black Star watermelon, strawberry and rose cake. The reason why this cake is so popular is because adding the watermelon makes it so refreshing and moreish. You can eat it after a rich or heavy meal and it feels like you're (almost!) eating a fruit salad! Haha do you like how I turned a cake into a fruit salad there?
Making a Pavlova Roulade
1 - A pavlova roulade uses the same ingredients as a pavlova: egg whites, sugar, cream of tartar.
2 - Instead of baking it in a low oven at 100C/212F for 2 hours, you bake it at 180C/350F for 10 minutes!
3 - If you're worried about it cracking when you roll it up (which is usually my concern with swiss rolls) the eggs and meringue make this like an airy sponge so it has some flexibility.
4 - The only downside: this is best put together just before serving or an hour before serving!
I am very excited to finally show you pics of our renovations for the upstairs bathroom! While the downstairs bathroom had a classic art deco Manhattan sort of feel we wanted the upstairs en suite which is in the modern part of the house to reflect a more modern aesthetic. The lady that owned the house had a really strange design where the sink sat outside the bathroom and the shower and bathroom had no divider so that the shower would rain down on the area around the toilet. It was awful. Couple that with the fact that the builders stupidly waterproofed over MDF (YES!!!) and obviously that rotted away leaving this black, seeping rotting mess and a giant hole. Every time we had a shower we wondered if the tiles would collapse (there were already cracks) and we would fall through the floor downstairs. Peter had warned us, "No dancing in the shower".
The whole design of this bathroom was about reflecting the garden view outside. When you look outside the louvre windows there is a tall palm tree so we used green subway tiles on the feature wall and wooden look tiles for the floor. The green subway tiles were hard to get. We had some samples from one shop but if anyone who has bought tiles know, you have to buy them straight away or they may get sold. Well they sold out almost immediately but they had a replacement tile that was ludicrously expensive. I went online and bought some from an online store for a third of the price, crossed my fingers that they were nice and when they arrived they were absolutely beautiful. Peter built us a niche that stretched all the way across - we have lots of soaps and shampoos and we needed the space for them. The shower mixer was positioned so that it wouldn't spray on you when turning the water on. The floors were also heated as it can get cold in winter and there was also plenty of lighting and overhead heating.
We collaborated with Caroma for this bathroom. It's an Australian designed and engineered brand that makes great quality tapware. We actually used Caroma in our downstairs bathroom and paid for that ourselves because we liked the quality. The shower head is amazing. It is really 3 shower heads in one. There's a massive 30cm monsoon shower head and the smaller, directional shower head has two settings: a massage jet and one that feels like the softest rain falling. I use the massage setting when I'm washing my hair and the rain setting any other time. For this bathroom we used the Urbane II range in brushed brass. And even if you don't outfit your whole bathroom in Caroma, I'd suggest definitely getting the shower head as it is worth every cent.
Our main concerns with the bathroom were space and storage. This is a smaller bathroom at around 3x2 metres compared to the large downstairs one that also has a huge amount of storage. We also bought a pill shaped shaving cabinet for extra storage. Our vanity is an American oak vanity with a good amount of storage with a single sink but my favourite part is the green stone benchtop. Poor Peter was being given the runaround by a stone mason as it was just before Christmas. He was at the end of his tether and when he was at the pork roll store he owns in Petersham, he came across a stone mason a few doors down the road. I was coming back from a doctor's appointment and he messaged me asking me to meet him there. The owner was so lovely and he had an incredible amount of stone. I spied this green stone that would match our green tiles perfectly and the next day they had our stone ready for Peter to install!
Our toilet was a Caroma rimless toilet (rimless was wholeheartedly recommended by our plumber). We wanted a heated towel rail so we bought a 7 rung one in brushed brass. It was our first and last purchase from Temple and Webster who delivered me a towel rail that didn't work and then gave me the runaround with terrible customer service. Never again.
The finishing touches were power plugs near the sink for curling irons as well as a USB plug so that I could charge my phone/LED mask/shower speaker in the bathroom with a multi USB charger. We just needed a laundry basket and found one that fit in the space by the toilet perfectly. I also wanted a wooden stool as I like to sit when I put my body lotion on and I asked my friend Sheridan where she bought the gorgeous stool at her Airbnb and she told me it was from Spotlight at a complete steal for $50! Peter also sealed up the flyscreen so no mozzies could get through (there was a huge gap) and now it has turned from a perilous nightmare into an absolute pleasure using the bathroom every day!
So tell me Dear Reader, do you like watermelon in cake? Have you had any strange bathrooms?
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