Saturday, February 8, 2014

Els's mess

There is a traditional English dessert called Eton Mess, which consists of crumbled meringue whipped cream and strawberries.  Very easy and actually rather good. This variation on the Eton Mess was done by a new friend who I met whilst staying with a friend on my quick trip to England.  We were having a small dinner party one night and Els offered to make her signature dessert. She did not have a name for it, but due to it's resemblance to Eton Mess we called it Els's Mess.


Very quick and simple but it really needs to be put together at the last minute or the meringue will go soggy. Hard for me to give quantities here as really you can make as little or as much as you want depending on the number of people for dinner, but here are the basic ingredients with proportions.

Pre made or bought meringue (about one nest per person)
Greek yogurt (If you use 0% this is actually quite a light dessert)
Lightly whipped cream (equal quantity to yogurt)
Lemon juice (juice of one lemon to about a cup of yogurt)
Frozen raspberries and blueberries (about a 1/4 cup per person)


Earlier in the day crumble half the meringue in to the bottom of the individual serving dishes we used cut glass tumblers.


Mix the yogurt and cream together and add the lemon juice.  I think I would add some lemon zest as well to punch up the flavour even more.  Keep the yogurt/cream mixture in the fridge until ready to assemble.  I think you could make this with just yogurt as long as you had a good quality Greek yogurt, then it would be almost a diet dessert!



After the main course has been finished it is time to quickly assemble the dessert.  Els was adamant that the fruit should be mostly frozen, so that you get the combination of textures of crunchy meringue, soft yogurt cream and the cold partially frozen fruit.

Spoon a couple of tablespoons of the yogurt mixture on top of the meringue.


Add some of the semi frozen fruit.


Spoon on a little more of the yogurt mixture then top with the other half of the meringue.


We had a few fresh blueberries that we put on the top for decoration.


And serve.  This looked beautiful and was so easy to put together.  The lemon in the yogurt cream mixture really cut the sweetness of the meringue.  This is a dessert I will borrow from Els in the future, it fulfilled all my criteria for a good recipe easy, quick and delicious.

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