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!

Lime and blueberry pavlova

I am not a big dessert person and I rarely make one unless I am entertaining and sometimes not even then.  But I had some lime curd left over from making the coconut lime cake last week and it seemed a pity to see it go to waste.  Cooking for an appreciative audience is always a pleasure and I knew if I made a meringue based dessert I would have an appreciative audience in Nancy who loves meringues and pavlovas.

And so a dessert is born

4 egg whites
1 1/2 cups icing sugar

Lime or lemon curd, you could buy this if you did not want to make it.

1 small carton of whipping cream whipped

Preheat oven to 250. Place the egg whites in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until stiff peaks form. Gradually add the sugar, when it has all been added beat for 5 minutes until the mixture is thick and glossy. 

You could just dollop this on to a parchment paper covered cookie sheet, or, as I did pipe it into two equally sized oblongs. I had marked out shapes on the paper and then turned it over.