Raise your hand if you hate Valentine’s Day! You know what we’re talking about, right? Cheap cologne, bad roses, cheesy couples, and heart-shaped cakes everywhere? Oh, and those hideous little angels with arrows and fat buttocks… Mmh, all things considered, the buttocks are ok. But the rest of the celebration just makes us want to kill someone! Speaking of killing stuff, we were once again procrastinating on YouTube when we stumbled upon 1996 Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ genius collab with Miss Kylie Minogue.
We’re not afraid to admit it: we burst into tears. Yes, my good ladies and sirs, we cried like two baby angels with big fat buttocks! Water, tissues everywhere! Why did you have to kill Eliza Day, Nick, why ?! … and then it hit us. Why not celebrate Valentine’s Day our way, by making a cake for the poor girl?
Baking an “All Beauty Must Die” Pavlova for Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue
As huge drama queens, it is impossible for us not to love the video’s tragic feel: red roses, virgin lips, rattlesnakes, damp swamps! Treason! Murder! Blood! Mental health issues! Violins! Everything is beautifully packaged in a fiery, lingering atmosphere. Not to mention Nick Cave’s beautiful baritone voice…
Anyway, the central theme for our dessert was, obviously, roses. After considering making a rose cheesecake, we finally fell in love with the idea of a pavlova, for the messiness of its structure and the millions of customization possibilities it offered.
Quiz alert: What’s a pavlova? A big meringuy, squishy blob thing – inspired by the delicate Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova – full of whipped cream, usually served with red fruits.
We chose pomegranate and made our whipped cream with a rose syrup (Yum!). Then, we twisted the whole damn thing by adding cardamom to the meringue and inserting a pomegranate-lemon curd. That was the easy part.
Roses are red, our fingers are blue
Then, we made everything worse by designing marzipan roses of all sizes to decorate the damn thing. It took us houuuuuurs! Since we’re so nice, here’s a little tutorial for you to impress your valentine – or your teddy snake.
We could have gone the easy way with sugar paste – you can find it quite easily and it comes in tons of shiny bright colors. But honestly, who wants to eat that in 2020? And we won’t even mention the amounts of food coloring contained in these pretty morsels.
In the end, though, everything went quite well and we’re very, very proud to show you this “All Beauty Must Die” pavlova!
Have to go, lots of Valentine’s cards to burn (#bonfiiiire). But, first, let’s take a minute to appreciate Nick and Kylie’s long-awaited reunion. This miracle happened last year:
If you like our new cake creation, share your thoughts in the comment section! If you don’t, please abstain. Oh, and make sure to check out the cake we made for Anna Calvi for Valentine’s Day!
