Mothers Day

Ok, so I'll be honest it didn't start well. My prep began yesterday, the plan was a Pavlova as my contribution to the Sunday Lunch my Sister and Neil were cooking, followed by a Victoria Sponge for afternoon tea.

I decided to make the meringue for the Pavlova first as I was pretty confident about making it (pah!) where as the Victoria Sponge was probably would benefit from me being fully in the baking groove.

So armed with my Good Food website recipe, meringue one began. After much whipping and folding I placed it in the oven and watched eagerly for it to turn crispy and light gold, but what in fact happened was it looked like a anemic gooey pancake.

I opened the oven door to take a closer look and it was then the vinegar smell hit me. Referring back to the recipe I realised that I'd got my tsp and tbsp mixed up, thanks to Sean I have photo to remind me of my meringue fail :-)

So I thought the best plan of action was to get on with the sponge and then go on a mission to buy more eggs and remake the meringue confident that I knew where I'd gone wrong. Thankfully my sponges turned out well...

So after going to buy more eggs my second attempt at meringue making ended in the same way. This time I'd followed the recipe to the letter except adding some red food dye, which plenty of other recipe suggest you can do. By now I was feeling a tad demoralised so Sean suggested getting a new recipe. When in doubt ask Delia, I used her recipe and finally, after 11 egg whites, it worked!

So, after a marathon baking sess I'd finally got there :-) Thankfully it all tasted good and my Mum was a happy Mum on Mothers Day :-)

I decorated my Victoria Sponge with fresh raspberries and little 'lollypop' signs with black and white photo's of me and my Sister when were were kids with 'Don't it make you proud' on the reverse and the Pavlova was finished with tons of cream and fresh berries, that covered up most of the cracks and breaks :-)