Aquafaba Chocolate Pavlova (Vegan, Gluten-Free)
A vegan version of the popular chocolate pavlova cake using aquafaba. Naturally gluten-free this delicious dessert is a crowd pleaser!
Ingredients
- 1 can chickpeas
- 1 cup sugar (I've used white and coconut)
- 1 tbsp arrowroot powder
- 1 tsp vinegar (I used ACV)
- 1 tsp vanilla powder
- 2 tbsp cacao powder (can sub cocoa) optional
- 1 pinch salt
- 1 can coconut cream
Instructions
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Preheat oven to 275 degrees and prepare a large baking dish by lining it with parchment paper. Combine the sugar and arrowroot powder in a small bowl, stir to incorporate
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Pour the chickpea brine and vinegar into a large bowl and start whisking on low for a few minutes then high. You'll start to see soft peaks forming after about five minutes.
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On medium-high if your electric whisk has that setting (otherwise keep it on high) add the sugar/arrowroot mixture two tbsp at a time, whisking until well incorporated after each addition and continuing until all the mixture is added. Add in the salt and continue to whisk.
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Whisk on high for about 5 more minutes or until you see stiff glossy peaks forming.
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When the aquafaba is whisked enough that you could turn the bowl upside down and it wouldn't move or fall out, whisk in the cacao and vanilla powder. Mixture won't look very dark, just speckled.
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Using a soft spatula, create and fill three even circles with the whipped aquafaba on your parchment paper of about 7-8 inches in diameter each. You should use up all of the aquafaba from the bowl.
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Immediately place in the oven and reduce temp to 250F. Leave them in the oven for 2-2.5 hours or until the outside is dry and the middle looks firm.
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Turn off the oven and let the pavlova cool (in the oven if possible).
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Make the whipped coconut cream: Scoop the cream into a medium sized bowl and whip for about 3 minutes or until fluffy. Add one or two teaspoons of powdered sugar if you'd like (I find it too sweet with the meringue), and put cream between each layer of meringue right away. If cream is left sitting out it'll become hard to spread, you may want to refrigerate and re-whip when ready to use. Top with whatever you'd like, nuts, fruit, chocolate shavings, and eat immediately!
Pavlova is a beautiful thing. Not necessarily beautiful to look at (unless you’re great at making perfectly even meringue layers), but beautiful to taste. The chocolate meringue is crispy on the outside, light and fluffy on the inside, with enough sugar to satisfy any sweet tooth.
Between each layer of meringue is a healthy spread of cream, (coconut cream in this case to keep it vegan) and nestled in between the layers of cream and meringue you can hide all sorts of things, my favorite being fresh berries!
If you look closely you’ll see that this particular pavlova has a layer of my beet berry jam spread for an extra hidden veggie boost and a pop of color!
The first time I had a proper pavlova was in Croatia a few years ago. I won a free flight on a KitKat wrapper (story for another day) and so I hopped on the plane right after I finished college exams with my mom! It just so happened that our trip fell around her birthday so I made sure to contact the Airbnb we stayed in and asked the owner if she’d be able to have a birthday cake there for when we arrived.
You can probably guess that it was a pavlova cake and oh my god was it amazing! I still think about that cake today – I remember sitting outside in the sun in Dubrovnik taking in the old city architecture trying to not totally devour the delicious pile of meringue and cream and berries. Not sure if the cake or the city made more of an impression on me.
It was perfectly light and decadent at the same time, exactly what you want for a cake in warm weather!
Pavlova is a naturally gluten-free dessert and by using coconut cream in place of traditional heavy cream, the filling is vegan making it a winner for restrictive diets. Want to know my favorite part about this dessert? The meringues are made with aquafaba!! That’s right, those pillowy meringues are whipped up from chickpea brine – no eggs involved!
If you’ve been following my blog for a few weeks now, you’ve probably grown tired of my incessant droning on about aquafaba, but once I get excited about something cool I can’t stop talking about it!
Please go get a can of chickpeas, and pour the liquid into a bowl, whip it up and just watch the aquafaba magic happen if you haven’t already. Truly a genius vegan innovation.
This pavlova is chocolate because I had some cacao powder on hand when I was making it and am one of those chocolate lovers, but you can also keep it classic vanilla by removing the cacao powder, or you can experiment with a variety of flavors. If you want to keep the simple vanilla meringue base you can always add flavors in the coconut cream or using your favorite jams/spreads/fruit/nuts between each layer (nutella anyone??) to jazz it up a bit.
If you have never had one before or are turned off by all the time required to make the meringues, JUST MAKE IT! It’s worth it! This recipe technically takes a lot of time from start to finish, but most of it is just the meringue sitting in the oven, it’s verrrrry minimal hands-on time. You could do lots of things while it’s in the oven, you could read a book, paint your nails, water your plants, do some yoga, clean your room, it’s basically a great opportunity to do an at-home chore since it does tie you to your house for a couple hours.
Pavlova will always remind me of my mom and I will never forget the memory of my first bite of pavlova in Croatia (genuinely scary how much I think about that cake…). I hope you try this recipe and it brings you as much joy as my first bite of a pavlova cake brought me!
Things that are key for this chocolate vegan gluten-free pavlova:
- You’ll want to make sure you have a great electric whisk as the aquafaba really needs to be beat like crazy in order to maintain good meringue form, otherwise a kitchenaid mixer will do the trick
- You need coconut cream, not coconut milk, for the cream filling. If you can’t find coconut cream (available at most asian supermarkets), you can get a can of coconut milk and put it in the fridge for 24 hours. When you open it, the white part on top is the cream which you’ll want to scrape out leaving the liquid behind for another use
- Don’t skimp on the time for whisking otherwise your meringues will not stay risen in the oven, they’ll get sad and droopy and no one likes a sad pavlova
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Fiona is a lover of all things sweet and all things healthy. Follow to stay updated on the latest "hidden vegetable" desserts
Wow this pavlova looks delicious! and I wouldnt be able to tell that merengue is vegan! I also have a vegan food blog 🙂 and I want to try to make some vegan merengue! The problem is here I have to make my own aquafaba because they don’t sell unsalted canned chickpeas!
Don’t be deterred – you can make aquafaba yourself from dried chickpeas! Takes more time but totally possible https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uztw9FUF3f8
Beautiful dessert and I can’t believe its vegan. I can’t wait to try it out for my vegan friends; they will be so surprised.
Wow! I can’t believe this is made with chickpea brine! I have a family member who is vegan. I’ll have to give this recipe to my aunt. Thanks!
I’m sure she’ll love it Carmen! 🙂
Making pavlova is on my “to do” list. This looks delicious and I know it would be so tasty. Must try soon.
Wow! This dish looks so delicious and delicate. I can’t believe it was that simple to make!
Okay, how can you not tell us the story about the free flight from the KitKat wrapper?! Haha. Is it on another blog post? Would love to read that story. This looks delicious by the way. Lovely presentation!
Haha perhaps I will add some of my travels to another tab of the blog…I did eat a lot of KitKats in college though and there were always competitions running on the wrappers if you entered in the product code online so I used to do it on my computer in class and the free flight was the best prize!
This is such a beautiful vegan creation, Fiona! I have never heard of Pavlova! Where is this dish traditionally from? It looks so yummy, the pictures make me want to bite into it! Also, i’ve been wanting to work with aquafaba (instead of just throwing it out!), thanks for the idea.
The internet tells me pavlova was named after a Russian ballerina and the dish originated in New Zealand! Definitely save the aquafaba and you can even freeze it to use later!
Reminds me so much of Christmas in Australia. I used to make this every year and I love how you made it healthy-ish!
I’ve never had pavolva, and I had ABSOLUTELY no idea it’s made with chickpea brine! I have a couple of vegan friends who would love this
Traditionally the meringues are made with egg whites but it’s easily made vegan with the aquafaba! Definitely share it with those vegan friends 🙂
What a beautiful, rustic looking dessert. It sounds simple to make, too!
This looks so beautiful! I still haven’t played with aquafaba yet, but I totally need to. This is just too gorgeous not too! Great shots too. 🙂
Looks amazing! I love that it’s GF as well. Using aquafaba is a great idea for a vegan melanie substitute, I would have never thought of that!
I’ve never cooked with aquafaba! Though I have had it in cocktails as a replacement for egg whites. I’ll have to try this out!
This cake looks delicious and the ingredients are interesting. It’s beautiful and interesting to see what can be replaced to make a recipe vegan!
I have to try my hands on Aquafaba..this Pavlova looks stunning..guilt free to indulge in
Mmm this looks so yummy! I love pavlova but have never made it before!
Such a creative recipe!! I love incorporating arrowroot into recipes, so I will definitely be trying this one! Especially since I’m working hard to become a better baker 🙂 can’t wait to make this!!
My chickens would be jealous if I traded in their eggs for chickpea brine but I’m really tempted to try that bit of kitchen magic! I’ve had pavlova on my mind for a while and your chocolate version looks incredible!
What a beautiful cake! I haven’t had pavolva before but I see it all the time in food magazines. I really want to try out some pavolva soon! I will start with your recipe first!
This looks gorgeous! What I really want to know about though is about this free flight you won from a kit kat wrapper!!! lol!
Everyone is talking about how they want to eat or or make it but no one is talking about whether they tried out the recipe! I did and I was so excited to I followed all the steps, the meringue looked so good that I took so many pictures of it in the bowl, before and after adding the cacao and vanilla powder and on the baking sheet right before putting it in the oven and that’s when my photo shoot ended and 10 minutes later, smoke was coming out of my oven because everything melted over and is now in the bottom of my ove. 🙁 not sure what went wrong, i preheated the oven at 275F then turned it down to 250 right before putting the meringue in.
I think people should only rate a recipe after making it, i went by the star rating but my mistake was that I didn’t read the comments to see that no one actually made this.
Hi Adam,
I’m so sorry to hear that you didn’t have success with the recipe! I have actually made it several times (I even made it again last week to double check I hadn’t made any errors in typing it out here, you can see the pic on my instagram) without fail so I’m not sure what went wrong for you 🙁 the trickiest thing with meringue is the oven temp and the timing. Oven temperatures can vary widely so I would recommend buying an oven thermometer and trying to find the ‘true’ temp of your oven. Mine for example displays 380 digitally when it’s at 350 actually so I have to adjust. Don’t be discouraged from the aquafaba magic!