Eton Mess Adapted

So this was from more than a year and a half ago, but still on my mind since I just made homemade meringues and they didn’t turn out very crunchy.
Eton Mess

It was Victoria’s last day of Christmas vacation and, despite it being Saturday, we decided to do a Sunday dinner around 2 p.m. since we would have to be at the airport around 6:40 in the evening. My small oven was already over-scheduled with a roast leg of lamb, roast potatoes and, waiting its turn in line, a Yorkshire pudding. We needed a dessert recipe that didn’t need baking! I remembered that I had some store-bought meringues in the freezer, as well as some blackberries, and we were off! This is adapted from Nigella Lawson’s Eton Mess recipe which calls for strawberries and pomegranate juice. I substituted my blackberries and just a splash of balsamic vinegar instead.

Ingredients
3 cups blackberries
Vanilla sugar – enough to sprinkle on the blackberries and lightly coat (You can use plain caster sugar if you don’t have vanilla sugar.)
1 teaspoon good balsamic vinegar
2 cups whipping cream
About 60-70 grams of tiny meringue nests

Method
Put blackberries into a bowl and add the sugar and vinegar, smash them slightly with a spoon and leave to macerate while you whip the cream.

Whip the cream in a large bowl until thick but still soft. Roughly crumble in most of the meringue nests - you will need chunks for texture as well as a little fine dust – leaving just a couple for topping.

Take out about quarter cupful of the blackberries, and gently fold the meringue cream and rest of the fruit mixture together. You don’t want it homogeneously red or purple, but just mixed so there is still some white whipped cream showing.

Arrange in berry bowls or wine glasses, and top each with some of the remaining macerated blackberries and crumbled meringues. Makes four or five servings, depending on the size of your glasses and how full you fill them. The perfect sweet (but not too sweet) ending to a perfect meal.