4/30 Photo a day–Close-up

I had taken this picture quite some time ago. As you already guessed this is a pavlova with whipped cream and berries. A perfect summer dessert. Very light and melt in the mouth dish. The photo is a close-up look on a slice of the meringue, with the rest of the meringue in the background. I made this for a fellow foodie’s recipe testing. You can read more about it here and enjoy the visual treat in both posts. Have a great day.

Recipe Testing : Meringue Fool

I have never ever made a meringue before. This was the very first time I was making it. Honestly I was a bit nervous, not knowing how will it turn out. When I saw the finished product I felt this is the easiest dessert I have ever made. I was following Vanessa Kimbell’s recipe. She is writing her cook book called Prepped.

The recipe is really very easy. It requires only six or seven ingredients to make this fabulous pudding. I loved it but I wanted to get more peoples’ opinion so I took the dessert to office for my colleagues to share. Believe it or not, couple of them had second helpings. I was so pleased to see their expression while they were having the pudding. Within minutes that huge pudding was demolished. Here is the recipe, please do try it out if you can..you will not be disappointed if you have a sweet tooth. It is very light, low effort pudding and melts in your mouth in moments.

Ingredients:

For the meringue:

6 egg whites

300 gm white caster sugar

For the Fool:

300 ml double cream

3 tbsp icing sugar

1/2 tsp Vanilla essence (This was my addition wasn’t there in Vanessa’ s recipe but she did say to use flavoured sugar which I didn't have so I added this)

For topping:

Rhubarb jam

Fresh berries

 

Method:

(I am using Vanessa’s version here as I followed them word by word and I recommend to do that too! )

Pre heat the oven at 150 degree / Gas mark 2. Before you begin, make sure your utensils are spotless. Don’t use a bowl that may harbour any grease (such as a plastic bowl), and make sure your utensils are dry. Meringues are sensitive and don’t get on with moisture or fat. To make the meringue base, whisk the egg whites until they are fluffy: 3–4 minutes should do. Once they are fluffy and white and form soft peaks, don’t stop the beating; just slowly add the sugar, a tablespoon at a time, until it is all dissolved. (approximately 10 minutes)

Tipping it all in at once knocks the air out of the eggs, and if you stop beating the eggs, you knock the air out when you restart beating. So a flow of continuous beating gets the best results. Draw a large dinner plate circle in Pencil on the back of some baking parchment and turn it over. Dollop the mixture onto the circle on the paper, turn the oven down to Gas 1./ 275F / 140C and bake for 2 hours. Turn the oven off and leave the meringue in the oven to cool.

To assemble, whip the cream and the icing sugar until thick. Not too thick, though: you need to drape it gently over the meringue. Then spoon the rhubarb jam (or stewed rhubarb) on top of the cream and serve. If you have any geranium petals of other edible flower petals you can use these to decorate.

You can pre order her book from Amazon here. Best of luck Vanessa! Looking forward to your book.

Strawberry Milkshake

This is something I make almost every morning for breakfast. Great way to kick-start your day. It's ready within minutes. Fast, easy, delicious, healthy, filling what else do you need? For a change you can mix different fruits in your milkshake like banana, peach, mango etc. anything you fancy.

Ingredients:
Strawberries 4-5 (or any other fruit you like)
300ml Milk
1 tsp sugar (optional)

Method:


Remove the stalks of the strawberries then place all the ingredients in to a blending container and blend them together. You can also mix different fruits if you like. Serve with few cubes of ice.
  

Little Delights

Once upon a time in a land far far away there lived a little girl. She lived in a little cottage and had a little garden full of strawberries, peaches, apricots pineapple and many more fruits and vegetables. Near her little cottage there were two small springs each had melted chocolate flowing through them. One was dark chocolate and the other one was white. On a bright sunny day she would go to her garden, hand pick some fresh fruits and get two bucket full of chocolates and make little delights for the afternoon market in the village.   

Ingredients:

Method:


The little girl decided to dress the strawberries in a suit with a bow. Some of the apricots in white dress with dark laces decorated on them and some in dark hat. Let the well dressed fruits relax for sometime and then she took them to the market.