The Pavlova Story

Yeah, so here's the thing:

Get all the ingredients (ask mum to get it so it's free!).

Firstly, preheat the oven to 130 deg C (that's 130 degrees Celsius for us noobs at cooking, and if you own a microwave oven, that means pressing the "bake" button until the little red numbers reach 130.

After you've got the stuff, here's the next thing you need to do : Learn how to separate the egg white from the egg yolk. You cannot have any egg yolk in this thing.

Method 1: My friend Alison suggests cracking the egg into your hand so the yolk stays and the white flows through the gaps between your fingers into the bowl.

Method 2 (which was the method i used, since i'd rather not have the eggy gooiness in my hands): Crack the egg into half, keeping the egg yolk in one side of the shell, and pouring the white out slowly - this is an accident prone method. You might wanna practice first.

In the end, i managed =)

The unused egg yolks (they disappeared soon after tho, no idea what happened to them)

Chuck the egg whites into the "whisker" - haha, the whisking machine or whatever - and whisker away! (Medium high, according to the recipe)

Then, you'll need to measure out the sugar (the pavlova ended up way too sweet so i'd probably put in less sugar than what the recipe prescribes next time). Check whether the eggs have been whisked to soft peaks (sorry, no pictures, it all happened too fast!) and then toss the sugar in a little at a time until it's all in.

Let it keep whisking til it becomes "hard peaks" (it'll look very nice and smooth and you can pinch a little of it between your fingers to check if the sugar has completely dissolved).

Then, sprinkle the vinegar and cornflour into the mix and fold in (this means not simply stirring the mix together, there's some intricate hand-eye coordination to this thing that i haven't quite figured out yet, but essentially it's mixing it all in slowly)

Then plonk the mix onto your pan (lined with baking paper) and do whatever with it. I was just gonna plonk it in a big blob right in the center but mum made me do some design thingie that looked like a real cake. I didn't like the looks of it but well, it's really up to you.

You need to leave it in there for an hour and 15 mins (i suggest not waiting in front of the microwave oven like i did. It is NOT like TV and it gets mighty boring after a while).

When it's done, it'll look brown and yummy smelling, although my cake looking thingie ended up quite lopsided but who cares! It didn't BURN! Woo hoo!

You'll need to leave it to cool (mum says: pls take it out of the oven to cool, don't leave it in there, you dingbat!)

It should feel hard-ish on the outside and nice and marshmallowy on the inside when it's all done and ready for decorating!

I put whipped cream and strawberries on top of mine. (Word of warning though: you need to whip whipping cream slowly, too fast and it'll curdle and look funny and be really wet. One of my guinea pigs said it looked like i was putting scrambled eggs onto the pavlova). Add the granulated sugar and vanilla essence to the cream to make it taste good!