Snow in April and Other Incidents

Last night I made my first Pavlova. Or rather, I started making my first Pavlova, following strictly the recipe in this excellent Russian culinary site.
For the meringues I used 4 egg whites, 180 g sugar + 10 g vanilla sugar + 1 vanilla, 3 tsp corn farina, 1 tsp white vinegar and 1/2 tsp lemon juice. The whites looked perfectly beaten, I distributed them into two circles, as described in the recipe and placed them in the warm oven at 100C.

And the baking began. Two hours later the meringues were still semi-liquid in the center, so I continued baking them and checking them and increasing the temperature of the oven to 120C and still baking them until it was midnight. I was mad and exhausted, so I turned off the oven and left them there to cool.

In the morning the meringues were still sticking to the baking paper, soft inside, but I removed them somehow and assembled the cake.
For the cream I used 200 ml French heavy whipping cream with 2 tbsp of vanilla powdered sugar and 250 g sour cream with 4 tbsp of white sugar.

I was too frustrated with this cake to bother much with the decoration, so I just scattered a few handfuls of fresh strawberries between the two layers and on top. A few hours ago I was certain that this is not only my first but also my last Pavlova, but now, that I've tasted it, I might have reconsidered :))

And a few pictures from our balcony of the snow we had yesterday (it's snowing big fat snowflakes as I write this post). The temperatures are close to but still above zero and the ground is already warm, so the snow cover is only temporary, but still - we want our spring back!

The cold and the snow precipitation is not comparable to that in other European countries like Austria or Moldova, but we had to take out the winter hats, sweaters and coats.

Looking forward to normal warm April days ...