Party Toes And Pavlova

Ladies and gentlemen,
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may I present,
for your admiration and astonishment,
my
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foot:

Isn't it pretty?
This happened on a day of girly bonding with my sister. We also went op~shopping, post Christmas sales shopping and lunching, where we shared an enormous plate of lemon pepper calamari. Mmm mmm mmm.
Fun.

My butterfly embellished toes were supposed to have their debut at a New Years Eve party, but I didn't end up going ~ I find great big parties hard work (although I am always glad that my more extroverted friends invite me to them.) I had a small, family New Year instead. We drank champagne and sang Auld Lang Syne around the piano. It was nice.




In my last blog post I wrote about a pavlova I baked for Christmas and Lisamoon requested the recipe (and also said that she'd like to eat it face first, with no fork or spoon, which tickled me.)
Lisa, here it is:

Pavlova
Ingredients:
Meringue Base:
4 egg whites
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup castor sugar
2 tsps cornflour
1 tsp white vinegar
1/4 tsp vanilla essence
Topping:
300 ml whipping cream
3 very ripe passionfruit
strawberries
approximately 50 grams milk chocolate

Method:
Preheat oven to 180 C.
Beat egg whites and salt until peaks form. Add castor sugar gradually as meringue becomes shiny. Separately, mix cornflour with vinegar and vanilla essence, and then add to meringue until it disappears. "Stick" a circle of baking paper, with a few drops of water, onto a platter (a 30 cm quiche dish should do nicely.) Pile the mixture onto the circle, and smooth sides and top. Put into oven and reduce heat to 150 C. Cook for 80 minutes. Turn oven off and leave pavlova to cool inside.
An hour before serving, cover meringue with whipped cream, passionfruit pulp, strawberries and chocolate shavings. (I used a potato peeler to shave the chocolate.) Putting the topping on well before eating lets the flavours of the fruit develop and also lets the cream soak into the meringue directly beneath it, making it soft and voluptuous.

This is all in Australian cooking terminology. If this presents problems please let me know or you might like to check out this conversion chart. I'd love to know if anyone has a go!