Pavlova: and my kitchen nightmare

I like to cook -- the reward is amazing. In my real job I get critiqued and analyzed and evaluated and argued with. It's fun.
But when I set food in front of friends, they are silent. In awe. Saliva pooling under their tongue.
This week we had a little baby shower at our house. I'm not really a dessert person. I'm about rich barbecue sauce and flavours layered into soups and sauces. I'm into grilling rubs and salts and convection tricks for increased flavour. Dessert -- well, it seems that it's less of an art and more of a science. Because precision requires attention, my little creative adhd brain rebels.
But I offered (for some weird reason) to bake.
So, on Tuesday night I got home and pulled out the stand mixer. Just because I don't like to bake doesn't mean I don't like the gadgets.
My overall goal was to create a Pavlova.
Basically, Pavlova is a meringue -- except it's not on the top of a lemon pie.
The recipe is simple.... 1/2 cup of egg whites (about 4); 1 cup sugar, teaspoon of vinegar, tablespoon of cornstarch, a schlucks of vanilla.
One would think I had all those ingredients in the house. Well, I knew I didn't have cornstarch, but I had lept over that hurdle successfully the week before.
I know that all of you have been taught that you should set all the ingredients you need on the counter before you start baking. That would make sense -- and it's likely that I wouldn't have had the egg whites already reaching soft peaks before I discovered I didn't have any white sugar. I'm smart enough to understand that white sugar and brown sugar, while both sweet, in baking have different textures and mess with the final product. But I have little fear of messing with final products. So I dumped in (One tablespoon at a time, as recommended) brown sugar. I was not at all surprised that the meringue did not have the lovely soft white colour of the picture in the recipe book.
Then I realized I didn't have any cornstarch.
That's a little harder. Flour seemed an unlikely candidate. Then, brainwave, pudding mix is pretty much cornstarch -- so I threw in a tablespoon of custard powder. I had everything else. So I slipped it into the oven and let it do its thing.
The next evening, I layered it with a rich custard, raspberries and blueberries and topped it with whipping cream. I noticed when I cut it, it seemed a little stickier than I thought, but, seriously, who in that crowd was a Pavlova expert?
It was amazing. The brown sugar transported it to a slightly toffee taste and texture.
I brought the dessert out. Served my guests. I had made lots --enough for everyone to have a generous piece.... OK, I probably made two times as much as reasonable. That night, even the skinny ladies who only eat sunflower seeds and cantaloupe were licking the platter with the rest of us.

An Ode to the Past

The call is to unplug.... stop the tweets, resist Facebook, shut out email, turn off your smart phone, close your eyes to Pintrest and (shudder) suspend Google. 

"When I was young..." How often have your heard that? 

Well, when I was young (because I'm old), my teachers were horrified at the lose of penmanship. In fact, I had to stay in over lunch hour to perfect my lopsided Q. They were terrified that we would lose the talent for complex multi-claused sentences. My grandfather often spoke with fondness about the tri-colonate sentence (I know -- my children laugh at me too). 

But I write today with all of my technology charged and running. With Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, email and an online game of Scrabble running in the background. You see, each generation fears for the next -- which is confusing, as if we would cease to be human. 

A well formed poem, a scintillating story crafted in the finest language, dinner conversation between friends and lovers..... all of those things will continue to exist because we are human. 

Yes, we will have momentary lapses where we overlook our lover to scan our eMail. Of course, the thrill of a new piece of technology will capture our imagination.  OK, perhaps Canada Post will be forced to build more creative strategies to be sustainable.... but imagination, creativity, communication, relationships.... they will never fade because.

This little cartoon may amuse you.....