G'day mate! (Does that give you a hint as to where my first dish was from?) AUSTRALIA! I asked my wonderful friend, Ashley, who is currently doing a ywam there, what kind of foods are authentic to Australia... she told me kangaroo, and vegemite. Seeing as how neither of those are all that easy to get in Oregon, I had to do something else! Dang it... I totally would have eaten kangaroo. Well I guess I'll just have to go visit her in Australia someday and eat some kangaroo then... :) In the end, I decided to make a cake called "Pavlova." It looked so yummy, and i just couldn't resist...! :)

      Anyhow... here's the recipe, along with some photos!

Ingredients:
*10 egg whites
*Large pinch of salt
*2.5 cups sugar
*5 tsp. Corn starch (Which is apparently called "corn flour" in other parts of the world! I feel like an idiot having looked for "corn flour" at the grocery store... :P
*2.5 tsp. white or red wine vinegar
*2 tsp. Vanilla extract
*2 pomegranates
*3 tangerines
*Whipping cream

Note: I think that you can use whatever type of fruit you want, and it'll still be authentic.


*Preheat the over to about 400 degrees. The recipe that I was using had the temp. labelled in celsius instead of fahrenheit. That totally threw me off for a bit! America needs to get on the same page as the rest of the world and start using celsius! Besides... fahrenheit is waaaayy too hard to spell. :P

*Whip egg whites and salt together until it starts to form soft peaks.

*Add the sugar in half cup increments. I think I added my sugar too fast which made my meringue a bit too liquidy... next time I'd add the sugar in while the mixer is turned on. By the time you have added all of your sugar, your mixture should be pretty stiff.

Here's a picture of what my egg white/salt/sugar mixture looked like after I was done with it. (Even though it was pretty liquid-y, it worked fine.)
 Oh, and look... there are popcorn bowls in the back round. Our family is a tiny bit addicted to popcorn... we can all eat a full bowl on our own. :)

*Gently fold in corn starch, vinegar, and vanilla.

* Now take 2-4 baking sheets and cover with either parchment paper of tinfoil. Do NOT use a regular pan for baking cakes... you won't be able to get your pavs out of it! I used 2 baking sheets, but my pavs ended up touching and I had to cut them apart. So 3 or 4 baking sheets may work better than 2. Divide your meringue. I made a 4 layer cake, so I divided my meringue stuff into 4 parts, but you could also do 3. Dump it out onto the baking sheet, try to keep it looking as much like a circle as possible.

* Place the trays in the oven, and immediately turn the oven down to 245 F. Bake for 90 minutes. When they are done baking, leave it in the oven to cool. I forgot to leave it in, but it still turned out ok... soooo.... yeah.

Here is what my finished pavs looked like... see, they got all blended together. :P
I also had some leftover batter which I made into a mini cake... no point letting anything go to waste! :)

*Whip your cream. I did a whole quart... I figured my three brothers would find something to do with the leftovers! ;) Peel your tangerines, and seed your pomegranates. yum yum yum.

*Ok, now's the fun part! Assembling the cake! First take one of the pavs, being really really careful not to crack it. (Which it did...) Cover it with whipped cream, and sprinkle a handful of berries on top. Repeat. repeat.

Here's my cracked pav. I still used it... whipped cream can cover up any mistakes!

*Decorate the top layer! :)

Final product... I drizzled some honey on the top, too. :)

*Eat!

I really liked the pavlova, but it was preeeetyy darn sweet. Eating too much of that might cause somebody to go into a sugar coma. :P Anyhow, thanks for reading! Hoo roo! (That is slang for "goodbye.") :)