This is a story about a girl trying to pretend she can cook and offering to recipe test a trial Pavlova recipe – trial because the producers (the ones higher up than me) wanted to see if a bigger pav could be made by changing an existing recipe… Names have been changed to protect…well to protect me in all honesty!!! I will warn however that there is much swearing…much much swearing, for which I do apologise!
So, to start with I pre heat the oven, once at right temp I start the clock....
It takes me 30 minutes before I get the pav in the oven. I don't think I beat the egg whites enough before adding the sugar, but the mixture has that lovely glossy sheen to it anyway. I beat it longer once the sugar is added in hopes that the mixture firms up a little. It does, but maybe not enough… [I realize later on that I am using the wrong part of the mixer to beat the eggs because I didn’t see the proper piece until I was putting the mixer back in the box!]
Be fore I go further I must say that my mum is a gun pav maker and makes perfect pavs every attempt…I now how a pav is made!!
There is nothing to do whilst the eggs are beating - so it's a fairly uninteresting first 30 - except of course when I put the mixture on the tray....
When I place it on the tray I can see it's not firm enough. In a true demonstration of a lack of loyalty the pav mixture spreads it way across the tray - looking like a 'cow pat' as Spencer notes in reference to a picture of it I send her. But I don't have time to re-mix it. I get it in the oven.
After 10 minutes you're meant to turn the heat down which I do - but it takes a further 10 minutes for the heat in my oven to get down to 120. F*$#*^g Gas Ovens.
The pav is looking like a slightly risen meringue disc. Not the pav my mum makes! F*$#*^g Pav. F*$#*^g Mrs Producer for making me do this.
Whilst in the oven it takes me 10 minutes to beat the cream and chop the strawberries - then it's a further 40 minutes of sitting and waiting and looking at the oven and licking the spatula, then feeling sick, then washing the utensils then looking at the oven then getting mad at husband for laughing at my pav, then looking at the oven again, then contemplating trying again in hopes of cheating my way into looking like I am the pavlova queen...which clearly, I am not.
The recipe says to take pav out of the oven to cool down...this goes against my instinct which is to let the pav cool in the oven, but I dutifully take pav out of oven and watch it deflate, then crack - stupid task anyway. I let it cool and it cracks some more (great...) then when cool, I slap on the cream and strawberries and hope that Mrs Producer says don't worry about bringing it in tomorrow, pics will be fine, but of course, she doesn't and now I must walk into to the office with deflated pav and a deflated ego to go with out....plus the pictorial evidence of my failure. F*#k F#*k F#*k!!!!!!!
I will never make it as a contestant on MasterChef, but at least I make it as good producer on MasterChef!!
