Looking for an easy summary dessert to eat outside while enjoying this lovely weather?? I'm being a little sarcastic. I don't know what the weathers been like down south (probably lovely... b@**&**ds!!) but here in Manchester it has solidly rained for pretty much all of the bank holiday weekend. Things are looking up a bit today though. So far so good, so I think a day of baking + DIY+ gardening is on the cards. Or maybe just the baking. We shall see.
Anyway, if the weather holds out and you need a summery dessert to eat al fresco, than look no further than this. Easy peasy (especially if you don't make your own meringues) but very impressive looking and very moreish. I think i would win in an eating contest for munching these. They are so light I'm sure i could eat a full batch of them with no problems whatsoever. One is definitely not enough!
If you wanted to go for a healthy option, you could switch the whipped cream for Greek yogurt. It will still be nice, just not as nice. Or you could just try to only have one. You can try, I'm not saying it will be easy. 1 of these on its own comes in at around 200 calories so if you can stick to one then its not a bad portion. But no-one in there right mind would want to stop at one. Just saying.
I made these for a friends birthday lunch and they went down really well. So without further ado... (i don't know why i just like saying that) heres the (very easy... did i say it was easy? Its easy!) recipe:
Ingredients:
10 meringue nests (if you would rather make your own instead of using, gasp, SHOP BOUGHT!!! here's a great recipe: click)
300 mls double cream
100g bar of white chocolate
100g caster sugar
Juice of half a lemon
1 punnet strawberries
1 punnet raspberries
1 teaspoon vanilla paste
Method:
To make the strawberry sauce, chop most of the strawberries into rough pieces and put them in a saucepan with the sugar and lemon juice. Reserve 5 strawberries for decorating. Simmer for about 5-10 minutes and stir/ mash the strawberries as you go. Leave it to cool.
Whip the cream until the soft peaks stage (when it is sloppy rather than firm but will hold its shape just about)
Chop the remaining strawberries in half. I like to keep the stalk on to look pretty but it doesn't really matter.
Melt the white chocolate and leave to cool.
Spoon 1 teaspoon of the strawberry sauce into the bottom of each meringue nest. Spoon on a generous blob of the cream. Top each nest with 2 raspberries and half a strawberry. Then drizzle generously with the cooled white chocolate.
You could garnish each one with a tiny sprig of mint if you were being really fancy.
And that's it!!
People were so impressed when I turned up with these desserts I felt like a bit of a fraud because i hadn't actually done very much at all, but who cares, they seemed to make everyone very happy. Job's a good'un! :)
Labels: desserts, light
