Category: meringue

Categories
almonds cinnamon egg food meringue

mulled wine macarons

mulled wine macarons

This photo is of easily the worst one of the bunch. I figured you can Google macarons and get a million results of perfect Parisienne treats. But I bet you’d struggle to find another that looks like Audrey.

I have been very lucky – expert tuition on how to make macarons, from the excellent Waitrose Cookery not once, but twice. This time Kenwood were laying on an event to promote their Boutique range. It’s a range of vivid and colour-themed small appliances. At the school each colour was arranged on a table with well-matching items which were very eye-catching.

They are gorgeous items, but here’s what else was eye-catching: the price. Each of these things are well made but I certainly can’t justify spending £55 on a kettle. Or £85 on a toaster. And when you have one item in the range, you’re going to want the rest… ouch.

I teamed with Helen to make macarons. The coloured cocktails had got to her a little, and she started piping little green nipples onto our pukkah pink blobs. We had a whale of a time.

These macarons are made not with mulled wine, but mulled fruit juice from Waitrose. Heavy with spice and warmth, this juice made the perfect accompaniment to super-sweet and chewy macarons. The macaron recipe is Waitrose Cookery School’s, and I was inspired to make the mulled reduction by my previous trip to the macaron class.

Thanks to Z-PR for the fruit juice, and Clarion Comms for hosting the Kenwood event.

Mulled wine macarons (makes loads):

1 litre mulled fruit juice

1 tablespoon icing sugar

1 cinnamon stick

1 teaspoon cornflour

275g caster sugar

95g egg whites (approximately 3 egg whites)

½ tbsp red food colouring

275g ground almonds

275g icing sugar

95g egg whites (approximately 3 egg whites)

  1. Pre heat the oven to 145ºC. Cut out two sheets of parchment paper, the same size as the baking tray and set aside ready for piping.
  2. Boil the mulled fruit juice over a high heat with the cinnamon stick until reduced by half, and then add the icing sugar. Mix the cornflour with a splash of water and whisk into the fruit juice, and continue to reduce until thickened. Put aside to cool.
  3. For the Italian meringue: In a small saucepan, add the sugar and 100ml of water and mix until there are no lumps. Add the food colouring and place the saucepan over medium to high heat and place the sugar thermometer inside. The required temperature is 114C.
  4. In the electronic mixing bowl, add the 95g of egg whites with the whisk attachment. This will then be ready for the sugar syrup when the required temperature is reached.
  5. Once the sugar syrup has reached 110C, start whisking the egg whites on a medium speed and once the temperature has reached 114C, (the whisking egg whites should be frothy at this stage) lift the thermometer out and slowly pour the syrup down the side of the bowl ensuring not to splash yourself! Turn onto full speed and after approximately five minutes, the Italian meringue will become glossy and whipped.
  6. Meanwhile, whilst the meringue is whisking, we can make the paste. In a separate bowl, combine the ground almonds and icing sugar and add the other 95g of egg whites and mix with a wooden spoon until a paste has formed. The paste should be stiff.
  7. Once the Italian meringue is ready (soft peaks will form) this is combined with the paste in three stages. If it is over mixed the mix will become too liquid and the macaroons will become very flat once cooked. It is important to ensure a nice gentle mixing motion. The first addition of the meringue to the paste will be the most aggressive in order to ensure there are no lumps. The second amount of meringue must be folded in gently and the final addition of meringue must be extremely gentle.
  8. The macaroon mix is then ready to be piped. Using a spatula, fill the piping bag half way. Pipe some mix into each corner of the baking trays in order to stick the parchment paper onto the tray. Pipe in straight lines going from left to right leaving a 2cm gap in between each macaroon. These are now ready to be baked for 17-19 minutes at 145C.
  9. Once they are cooked, take the trays out of the oven and leave to cool. Pipe some of the sticky fruit juice inbetween two halves, before downing in one.
Categories
cream egg food meringue strawberry vanilla

strawberry pizza

This was supposed to be a strawberry roulade, but the meringue was too fragile for rolling! As a birthday treat for Mrs. Spud, she didn’t mind. When I cut into it, it held it’s shape nicely to the point where you could pick it up to eat – hence, Strawberry Pizza. Massively inaccurate, but makes me smile.

Strawberry pizza (makes a meringue approx 35cm x 20cm):

For the meringue:

3 egg whites

¼ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon white wine vinegar

½ vanilla bean paste

200g caster sugar

1½ teaspoons cornflour

For the cream topping:

200ml double cream

½ teaspoon vanilla bean paste

For the strawberry sauce:

500g strawberries

1 tablespoon honey

For the strawberry garnish:

6 strawberries, quartered

1 tablespoon icing sugar

Zest and juice of half a lemon

½ teaspoon vanilla paste

  1. Heat the oven to 120°C. Line a baking sheet with baking paper.
  2. Whisk the egg whites, salt, vinegar and vanilla until soft peaks form; by hand if you’re bored or using an electric gadget like everyone else. At this point add the sugar and cornflour until stiff.
  3. Smear the meringue in one swooping layer across the baking sheet. Bake in the oven for 2 hours until it is a gorgeous ivory colour and crisp on top.
  4. While it bakes, combine all the strawberry garnish ingredients and leave in the fridge to macerate until needed. For the sauce put all the ingredients in a saucepan and simmer for 10 minutes. Want it rough and ready? Mash with a fork. Want something smoother? Pass through a sieve.
  5. When the meringue has cooled and been removed from the paper, whisk the cream and vanilla together and layer on top of the meringue. Drizzle the sauce over and serve with macerated strawberries on top. If you have some knocking about, some holy basil dotted about would be awesome.
Categories
cream food hazelnuts meringue strawberry

strawberry crunch trifle

Waitrose and Heston Blumenthal have released strawberry crumble crunch as a recipe card in store to help celebrate the Jubilee. Sounds a bit like Mr Tumble Jumble to me. I’ll be honest; I didn’t seen the recipe card before making this but I had seen the recipe video on YouTube. Based on that I slung it together at work; during my lunch break I wasn’t able to get everything possible and I had to make do with the equipment to hand (microwave, kettle and fortunately a George Foreman Grill!) All things considered I think I ended up with a pretty tasty dessert! Perfect for such a hot day and created lots of smiling faces in the office. Took about 15 minutes and is well worth it!

Heston’s a bit obsessed with trifles. If you’ve made the real thing I’d love to know how it ended up.

Heston Blumenthal’s strawberry crumble crunch (serves 8 – 10):

300g strawberries, hulled

1 tablespoon of sugar

400ml double cream

8 meringue shells

A small pot of strawberry yoghurt

A satsuma

20g hazelnuts

  1. Put your serving bowl in the fridge to get nice and cold. Put the sugar and strawberries in a bowl (keep back one strawberry) and mash roughly with a fork. Add a splash of water and microwave for 4 minutes. Once the fruit is mushy add a grind of black pepper, pop into the base of your trifle bowl and refrigerate while you do everything else.
  2. Whip the cream until thickened to where it barely falls off a spoon. Stir through the yoghurt and squeeze in the juice of ½ a satsuma. Crush the meringue shells and stir through.
  3. Preheat a dry frying pan or George Foreman Grill to its highest setting. Thinly slice the remaining strawberry, sprinkle with sugar and grill until starting to turn black, and then flip over and grill the other side. When they’re done remove to one side, bash up the hazelnuts and pop those on the grill for a couple of minutes until lightly toasted.
  4. Once the strawberry mix in the fridge is cold, layer on the cream mix, top with the nuts and sliced strawberry.
Categories
almonds amaretti cream meringue saffron strawberry sugar

heston blumenthal royal wedding trifle

As soon as I saw this article detailing the Heston Blumenthal Royal Wedding trifle made in celebration of the upcoming nuptials, I knew I had to give it a go.

Following the runaway success of Heston’s hidden orange pudding during Christmas 2010, Waitrose commissioned the Dinner proprietor to create a refreshing Summer dessert in celebration of the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. I can’t say I care a great deal about the wedding but I do appreciate the general buzz of excitement among people I speak to – rays of sunshine in these politically gloomy times are welcome. One thing definitely guaranteed to grab my attention however is a new Heston recipe.

Heston seems to have a bit of a thing for trifles, as In Search Of Heston has previously noted. His In Search of Perfection version is particularly mental, with typically absurd amount of stages involved. It did come in handy for one section however – the strawberry compote, which here serves as the “jelly” layer of a Seventies trifle. I incorporated fresh strawbs in with the compote, as I know Heston is fond of mixing the cooked and raw version of an ingredient together. In place of custard there’s a particularly intriguing saffron cream, topped with fragrant, crisp amaretti biscuits. The supermarket version is laced with Marc de Champagne brandy – well I checked my cupboard and I was fresh out (!) so I plumped for my old favourite dessert spirit, Marsala. Finally there’s a meringue topping, and a garnish of candied almonds and dried strawberries.

There’s a few stages involved to be sure but none of them are particularly taxing and involve a bit of letting the ingredients sit about. I have no idea how close my version has come, as it isn’t in the shops yet at the time of writing, but I was very pleased with it. It’s creamy, fruity and the saffron sends in a festive, spiced note out of left-field, yet it’s somehow warming and comforting.

I’ll be fascinated to try the real thing when it’s around to see how I did but either way, I think it’s a lovely dessert with a lot going for it.

Heston Blumenthal’s Royal Wedding Trifle (serves 6 – 8):

For the strawberry compote:

1kg strawberries, hulled and diced

100g caster sugar

  1. Place the strawberries and sugar (reserving 4 for later) in a saucepan and gently heat, stirring occasionally. Cook down for about 15 minutes until you have a sticky puree.
  2. Pass the puree through a sieve to remove all the bits and crush well with the back of a spoon to get the most out of it.

For the saffron cream:

500ml double cream

About 20 threads of saffron

8 tablespoons caster sugar

  1. Pop the cream in a saucepan and add the saffron. Bring to a gentle simmer then turn off the heat and allow to cool. The saffron will infuse and colour the cream, turning custard-yellow.
  2. When the cream has cooled whisk, gradually adding the sugar. Keep going until you have a stiff cream.

For the amaretti:

150g crushed amaretti biscuits

4 tablespoons Marsala wine

  1. Mix the amaretti with the Marsala but don’t let it sit around too long – you still want them to have some crunch.

For the meringues:

5 egg whites

300g caster sugar

1 teaspoon cornflour

1 teaspoon white wine vinegar

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 150°C. Whisk the egg whites until soft peaks form, then gradually incorporate the sugar. Once all that’s in add the cornflour and vinegar. Keep whisking until the mixture is stiff.
  2. Pour into a piping bag and pipe 5cm blobs onto a lined baking tray, then bake for 1½ hours until firm but not browned. Turn off the oven and leave to cool in the oven for a further oven, then peel off and store in airtight containers until needed.

To garnish:

30g almonds

2 tablespoons caster sugar

2 large strawberries, finely sliced

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 100°C. Dust a baking tray with icing sugar and lay the strawberries out on the sugar. Pop in the oven for about half an hour, until the strawberries are slightly shrivelled and sticky. When cooled peel off the tray gently.
  2. Put a small pan over a high heat and add the almonds. Shake them around for a couple of minute until toasted all over.
  3. Add the sugar, a pinch of salt and a tiny splash of water. Keep tossing the mix around in the pan until the sugar starts to turn golden brown, then turn out onto a ceramic plate to cool.

To assemble:

  1. Place the strawberry compote in the bottom of a serving dish (a nice glass one would be traditional, try and use a prettier one than mine). Finely slice the last 2 strawberries, top with a small twist of black pepper and stir into the puree.
  2. Spoon the cream over the strawberries. Top this with the amaretti biscuits.
  3. Arrange the meringues on the top, and scatter over the almonds and dried strawberry slices. Serve with bunting.
Want to know more about Heston and his recipes? Check out my Heston ingredient infographic.
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