Originally published by The Clifton Courier, November 20

I had a Friday night off. I had the house to myself. So you bet I was going to do some baking.

I’d promised Grandma I’d attempt making her a pavlova having just recently seen Nigella Lawson cooking one on her show and decided that Friday night was the night. I was going to do to it.

Luckily, I have Nigella’s How To Eat, which has a nice, basic pav recipe that I learnt was adapted from Stephanie Alexander. It was our own Australian kitchen queen who came up with the best pav tip I’ve ever heard – turning it upside down to pile the cream on the soft, goey underbottom and leave the crust which formed on top to contain the creamy slop. My words, of course, not hers.

Here’s how I spent my evening, should you chose to replicate it:

Step One: Put on some Nora Jones. You’re a mature woman now, the kind who bakes thoughtful desserts and attends Tupperware parties and buys high thread count sheets (when they are heavily, heavily discounted, but still, you care about yourself). You deserve some Nora.

Step Two: Consider lighting a scented candle but light a citronella coil instead because the mozzies have infiltrated the house because beautiful old Queenslander houses apparently don’t have flyscreens to keep them out. I’m sorry, but how superior can this home design be if it doesn’t keep the mozzies out?! You shouldn’t need to light citronella coils inside your home. I personally quite like the smell citronella gives off, but that’s not the point.

Step Three: Pour yourself a glass of red, because it is Friday night after all and you’re a classy woman, remember?

Step Four: Question if the wine you’re drinking is bad, considering you opened it more than a month ago and there’s winey residue stuck to the inside of the bottle.

Step Five: Drink regardless. You don’t know what good wine tastes like anyway.

Step Six: Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.

Step Seven: Break four egg whites into a bowl, using your hands as the separator so you can enjoy the feeling of goo in your hands. Delight in how soothingly gross this process is. Collect the yolks in a container and refrigerate – you’ll deal with them later.

Step Eight: Look for salt to sprinkle in and realise your household is too extra for normal table salt. Decide that the crumbly French stuff might be better than the pink Himalayan rock salt and the peri peri salt. Hope for the best.

Step Nine: Realise you don’t have a stand mixer and the food processor probs won’t be the best thing to beat air into your whites, so arm yourself with a whisk, take a deep breath and beat. Note that Nigella wants you to keep going until you get “satiny peaks”.

Step 10: After four minutes and 11 seconds of beating, swearing and rest breaks*, decide the mixture is satiny and peaky enough and move on to the next step.

* I wouldn’t say that I’m the strongest or fittest woman in the world, but I go to Body Pump enough to delude myself into thinking that my biceps have a bit of go about them. And, sure, I’m a long way off having Michelle Obama’s arms, but I thought it was alright. Whisking these eggs made me realise I have got a long, long way to go. The experience was truly humbling and completely exhausting. 

Step 11: Nigella wanted 250 grams of caster sugar to go in next but you don’t have kitchen scales. Google the conversation and learn one cup of caster sugar is about 225 grams. Measure out a cup and a bit of caster sugar, assuming you’ll be right.

Step 12: Add this in a third at a time, beating those dam eggs again.

Step 13: Nigella says to beat the mixture until it goes stiff and shiny. Decide it looks shiny and is becoming tricky to beat with your very, very tired arm, and assume that’s stiff enough. Never mind that it’s still pretty runny.

Step 14: Sprinkle in two teaspoons of cornflour. The recipe called for a teaspoon of white wine vintager, but there’s only apple cider vinegar in your house, so tip that in and use extra drops of vanilla essence, hoping it covers the taste.

Step 15: Be thankful this just needs to be gently folded in.

Step 16: Note Nigella’s advice to heap this mixture into a circle, attempting to do the same. Also note that your mixture is a bit too runny to heap… it’s more of an ooze.

Step 17: Place in the oven and IMMEDIATELY (Nigella used all caps so I will too) turn it down to 150 degrees. Set your timer for one hour and 15 minutes. Decide you should use this time wisely.

Step 18: Use your time freewheeling a bickie recipe with those old yolks, thinking you’ll really impress the girls at the Tupperware bridal kitchen tea you’re going to tomorrow.

Step 19: Pull it out of the oven even though Nigella says to let it cool completely in the switched off oven. But those bickies need their time in the oven too, so you have to make a sacrifice. Hope the pav won’t take it personally.

Step 20: Realise the pav did take it personally, because it’s more of a flat, crumbly disc than a heaped marshmallowy dream.

Step 21: Decide you’re done for the night, reconcile to cover your disgrace in cream, which you hope will be enough to stop people noticing they’re eating sugary Styrofoam when they tuck in.