This heady combination of meringue, cream and fruit (all the major food groups) was invented in the 1920s when Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova took a tour down under. Both New Zealand and Australia claim to have made the delicious dessert in her honour, further complicated by a recipe appearing in a book called Home Cooking for New Zealand that was actually written by an Aussie. A tangled web indeed!
What is far less complicated is the fantastic pavlova making kit that Dan and Fiona sent over from NZ. It's a Christmas tradition there. And it's an egg! Inside are instructions and a little packet of magic powder. You measure the water in the top of the egg and the sugar in the bottom, mix it all up, bake it...a perfect pavlova then appears from your oven! Just add cream and fruit, which I did - golden raspberry and kiwi (of course).
Getting a perfect, light meringue is notoriously hard, but even I was able to follow the instructions and get results Anna Pavlova herself would have been happy with. The structural integrity of the meringue dome did suffer under the combined weight of the toppings, but none of our neighbours who came round for one of our infrequent apartment block gatherings seemed to mind. And they were very impressed with the egg, which I will keep forever.
So that kind of ends the debate for me. NZ obviously invented, cooked, and served the first pavlova, and have now perfected it to foolproof convenience. All they need to do now is find a way to weaponize it and those pesky trans-Tasman quarrels will be over.
Here is the miracle ovum. Actual size(-ish).
What's inside? Could this really make meringue cooking easy?
Action shot.
It's in the oven. The instructions give dire warnings against opening the door at any stage of the process.
And it's out! Look at that.
I wasn't quick enough to get a completed photo before people started on it.
Maintenance manager Florin is very impressed. And he's from Romania, which is near Russia, and his fiance is Russian, and Anna Pavlova was Russian, so he should know.
And that was that.
