The Pavlova that wasn't...

This is our oven.

Yes, its sitting on our kitchen table.  Yes its only 22cm x 30cm (that's about 9" x 12" and I'm kind of guessing right now because I'm too lazy to get up and find the tape measure).  It gets up to 250 C (482 F)...or so it says.  Everything takes twice as long or longer to cook in there.  But it's an oven and it works so we're learning to go with the flow.

Jason offered to make me a pavlova for my birthday -- a pavlova is my most favourite dessert that we only eat once or twice a year since its loaded with sugar.  So hurdle # 1 was cooking the meringue and hurdle # 2 was trying to make some type of non-dairy cream (Jason and cream just don't get along besides whipping cream being extremely expensive).  It became a team effort.  We googled countless coconut cream recipes and the first try -- well I wouldn't call it successful but at least it turned out better then the final attempt which was a total disaster (actually this picture makes its look better than it was but it was really the consistency of a runny custard).  

And the meringue.  The oven went from not cooking to burning in zero seconds flat.  This is what it looked like after it rose and then deflated before our very eyes!

And after we'd snacked on it a little -- hey we needed some reward for our hard labour!