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Vanilla Recipes

Smoked Vanilla Bean Pavlova with amaro ice cream and roasted figs by Erin Kobler

Smoked Vanilla Bean Pavlova with amaro ice cream and roasted figs by Erin Kobler

Erin Kobler, who comes from a family of restaurateurs, discovered her love of cooking through trial and error. Her parents gave her free rein in the kitchen to create whatever she wanted, “no matter how many mistakes I made or how badly something was burned, my father always told me: that’s extra flavor,” she explains.

 

She knew she wanted to dedicate herself to pastry making when she saw programs like Ace of Cakes on television. In order to learn more about the trade, she studied at Kendall College and earned her bachelor’s degree in Culinary Entrepreneurship with an associates in Baking and Pastry.

 

Throughout her career, she has worked in different establishments in Chicago such as Balena, Switf & Sons, or Bellemore. In November 2021, she joined Proxi and Sepia as an executive pastry chef, and in 2024 she won the Starchefs Chicago Rising Stars Award for the Smoked Vanilla Bean Pavlova with amaro ice cream and roasted figs dessert included in Sepia’s menu.

 

To make this recipe, Kobler used Nielsen-Massey Tahitian vanilla beans. Their delicate, fruity flavor profile lifts the dish, a subtle but effective counterpart to the figs. The cold smoking method she uses in the recipe also compliments the Tahitian vanilla’s low heat tolerance well, preserving its delicate and complex flavor compounds. In addition, the chef used Pure Vanilla Bean Paste, also from Nielsen-Massey, in the pavlova, which is created with a proprietary blend of vanilla beans, and rounds out the palate in this dish. “Paste is also cheaper per pound than whole beans and is a timesaver in the kitchen (no need to scrape the beans), so it is an efficient alternative to whole beans. We find that chefs like to reserve whole beans for use in the star of the dish (such as the smoked vanilla powder and pavlova in this case) and paste and extract for use in the supporting elements where they still want the vanilla flavor to carry through but it is not the focus,” Nielsen-Massey assures us.

 

Below we share exclusively on www.sogoodmagazine.com the recipe for their award-winning Smoked Vanilla Bean Pavlova, adapted by StarChefs.

 

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