What is the best way to making a great pavlova base?
The secrets: (some are old wives tales, but hey, it's an old recipe)

Eggs: Room temperature (you don't put eggs in the fridge do you?) and not fresh

Contamination: Make sure everything you use to prepare the base is perfectly clean, especially no grease. Use boiling water to rinse everything first. Metal or glass bowls are best, as plastic is harder to get 100% clean. Also make sure no yolk gets into the egg whites

Beating: When eggs whites have gone firm, add the sugar a little at a time using a powerful beater machine going flat out. NZ'ers use their trusty but ancient Kenwood Chef with the glass bowl for ten minutes until the it looks like the Swiss Alps on a sunny day. You should not be able to feel the castor sugar when you squish some mix between your fingers. If they go dull you have over beaten. They will still work but will go extra soggy when cooked as the sugar runs out

BTW: Use ear muffs when using your Kenwood Chef, I kid you not!


Size: Height = radius, or a little less. A radius of less than 10cm means you won't get Pav, just meringue.  You can experiment with baking paper rings to hold the mix into a perfect cake shape if fussy. I wouldn't bother though

Problems:


Collapse: You opened the oven door ... DON'T
Cracking: Normal, don't worry. This is a messy desert and you'll be covering it with whipped cream soon!
Crystallisation: over cooking
Marshmallow like in middle: Normal, that's what a Pav is meant to be like. If it's not like that you have over cooked it, or you didn't make it thick enough. Foamed egg white is a self-insulator, once the outside cooks it stops the heat getting into the middle
Weeping: too much sugar, over beating, or not enough cooking. Cook for little longer on humid days


If truly stuck, go on a course http://www.creativetourism.co.nz/workshops_taste_pav.html

This is what they should look like