Pavlova

Heat the oven to 110C/225F.

Draw a 22cm circle on a sheet of baking paper and lay it pencil-side down on a baking tray.

Check that the bowl and whisk are spotlessly clean and dry. Any grease, or a trace of yolk in the whites, and they will not take air at all.

Whisk the egg whites with the fine salt on medium speed for 2-3 minutes, until they hold soft peaks that flop over at the tip.

Add the caster sugar a tablespoon at a time with the whisk still running, leaving about ten seconds between additions.

Take four or five minutes over the sugar. Tipped in all at once it collapses the foam, and added faster than it can dissolve it leaves the meringue gritty and weeping beads of syrup in the oven.

Whisk for a further 3-4 minutes after the last of the sugar, until the meringue is thick, white and glossy and stands in a peak that holds its point.

Rub a little between finger and thumb. It should feel completely smooth; any grit means undissolved sugar and another minute of whisking.

Sprinkle the cornflour over the surface and add the vinegar and vanilla.

Fold them through with a spatula in a few strokes, no more.

Pile the meringue inside the drawn circle.

Work it out to the line with a palette knife, building the sides higher than the middle so there is a shallow crater for the cream.

Bake for 2 hours, until the outside is dry and crisp to a light tap and the pavlova lifts cleanly off the paper at the edge.

Turn the oven off and leave the pavlova inside with the door shut for at least 4 hours, or overnight. A meringue taken from a hot oven into a cold kitchen contracts too fast and cracks right across the top.

Whip the cold cream with the icing sugar to soft peaks that flop when the whisk is lifted.

Spoon the cream into the crater, leaving a rim of bare meringue showing.

Scatter the raspberries and strawberries over the cream.

Spoon the pulp and seeds of the passion fruit across the top.

Assemble it within half an hour of eating. Cream and fruit juice dissolve meringue from the inside, and a pavlova topped in the morning is a soggy disc by dinner.

Cut straight down through the shell with a large knife and expect it to shatter, which is the point.