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Tis the time for lots of macaron's that haven't quite "footed" and meringues that didn't quite, ummm "meringue?". What to do? Why make Eton Mess for dessert of course.

Eton mess is a traditional English dessert consisting of a mixture of strawberries, pieces of meringue and cream, which is traditionally served at Eton College's annual cricket game against the students of Harrow School. wikipedia

Oh my, I couldn't resist the boxes brimming with sweet dark cherries that fill the Australian fruit shops in December, plus I had macarons "oddments" and end of batch meringes from Christmas gift baking. So lets make a delightful mess... albeit a bit "girlie" today, I'm afraid I went too far with the 100's and 1000's (nonpareils).

Cherry Eton Mess 

(by all means go traditional and use strawberries instead if preferred) 

Ingredients 

*2 cups of chilled whipping cream

2 tablespoons of sugar

1 vanilla pod scraped of seeds (use vanilla extract to taste if you don't have pods)

700 grams (25oz) of fresh cherries 

leftover macaron shells, meringue pieces or buy a packet of meringue shells

Method

Pit most of the cherries, leaving a few whole ones for decoration. Place the pitted cherries and one tablespoon of the sugar in a small bowl and give the mixture a gentle squeeze to release a little of cherry juice, stir to combine. Refrigerate until serving time.

Whip the cream, with the remaining one tablespoon of sugar and seeds from the vanilla pod until soft peaks form. Refrigerate until serving time.

Assembly

When you're ready to serve, in no particular order, spoon cream, cherries, broken pieces of meringues and macaron's into serving glasses. 

Top with whole cherries dipped in melted white chocolate if desired. 

*variations; try adding plain yoghurt or creme fraiche to the whipping cream. I often use 1 1/2 cream to half yoghurt, it will lighten the mouth feel and is more refreshing in summer. 

Macerate the cherries or strawberries with sugar and a juice or alcohol of choice before assembling, brandy, grand marnier or a favourite dessert wine are good choices.

Have fun and happy baking :)

Want to make your own meringues? Here is a recipe for 4 individual pavlova shells that you can break up for your Eton Mess... omit or change colour as desired. 

More desserts in glasses? How about Peach Verrines in Minutes

More cherries? A quick cherry cupcake decoration

                      Snow Cherries

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Melting moments biscuits (cookies) are popular in Australian cafes and loved by home bakers.

Yum, melting moments today; the soft textured shortbreads sandwiched with a sweet filling are perfect to serve with a cup of tea or favourite brewed beverage (I mean coffee, not beer... but hey I'm not one to judge). 

popular brands of custard powder

Now I've used 'custard powder' as part of the flour component of the recipe, it gives the biscuits a golden glow and a slight custard flavour. Custard powder is a commercial product that Aussies and Brits have been raised with, you can replace with an equal amount of cornflour if desired.

Mine have a white chocolate raspberry ganache filling, but they can also be filled with butter cream or even a simple icing. 

Raspberry Custard Melting Moments

adapted from Donna Hay's 'modern classics book 2'

Preheat oven to 160C (320F)

line two baking trays with non stick paper

makes 36 biscuits (18 sandwiched)

ingredients

175g unsalted butter, cubed and softened 

1/4 cup pure icing sugar (confectioners sugar)

1 tsp pure vanilla extract/essence 

1 cup plain flour, (all purpose) sifted

1/4 cup custard powder sifted 

pinch of salt

filling

90 ml (3 fluid oz) pouring cream

2 tablespoons of raspberry puree (squashed fresh or frozen raspberries pushed through a sieve)

2 tablespoons of homemade or best quality raspberry jam

1 piece of lemon zest (use a potato peeler)

180 grams (6.34 oz) white eating chocolate finely chopped 

method

Place the cubed softened butter, icing sugar and vanilla in the bowl of electric mixer and beat on medium high speed until light and fluffy. 

what light and fluffy looks like

With a spatula or metal spoon stir through the sifted flour, custard powder and salt. You're just stirring until the ingredients are just combined, excess stirring with cause the gluten to develop and toughen the resulting cookies.

Ok, if your mixture is too soft to roll into balls pop the whole bowl in the fridge for 20-30 minutes to firm up enough to roll teaspoons of the mixture into balls.

Divide the balls between lined trays. Use a fork to press gently on top of each ball to make a indented pattern.

Bake biscuits 15 to 17 minutes until lightly golden. 

Set aside to cool.

Make the filling by heating the cream, raspberry puree, raspberry jam and lemon zest stirring gently to incorporate until the cream "just" comes to the boil. Remove from heat, remove the lemon zest and pour hot mixture over the white chocolate, stir until smooth. Allow to cool until thick enough to spread.

pipe the filling like I have with raspberry or plop on a little like I have with the *vanilla nutmeg

Spread or pipe filling onto 18 cookie halves and sandwich with another cookie.

Melted moments benefit from being stored overnight before eating... if you can wait!!

Oh, I made up gift tins using small blank tins and printed labels on A4 paper. Clip art reindeer from Microsoft clip art.

Goodness, this story is getting longer and longer I'll go before we hear the New Year countdown.

Happy Baking :)

*vanilla nutmeg filling; follow instructions for raspberry filling omitting the jam, raspberry puree and lemon. Once melted add one teaspoon of pure vanilla extract. Allow to cool until thick enough to spread. Grate fresh nutmeg on filling before sandwiching cookie.

You might also be interested in making you own raspberry jam

Got leftover custard powder, why not give 'Mum's vanilla slices' a try?

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Have you tried your hand at making your own confectionary? It would have been my Mum's birthday today, and as Mum loved all forms of caramels including hard butterscotch lollies I thought we could look at making candies/lollies starting with cooking sugar to the 'hard crack' stage. 

'Hard crack' lollies include; candy canes, lollipops, brittles, praline, lollies categorised as "boiled lollies" like fruit/acid/sour drops and hard caramels. 'Hard crack' is reached at 150C (300F), we are taking it a little further today to produce caramel.

Glucose syrup is another form of sugar and like fructose often added to granulated sugar when making candy. The glucose syrup helps prevent the sugar crystallising. In Australia you can buy glucose syrup in any supermarket, you might have to seek it out in other parts of the world.

Butterscotch Brittle

Buttery and carmelly (ok, that's not a word... but it should be!) with a touch of sea salt, today's hard lollies are meant to be sucked, add peanuts, pecans or macadamia for nut brittle. Whether packaged in cello bags complete with a small hammer to crack off pieces, or neatly moulded; butterscotch brittle makes for a lovely homemade gift. 

lightly oil a 18cm x 28cm tin (7in by 11in sheet pan)

Ingredients

2 cups white sugar (granulated white) 

1/3 cup water

*2/3 cup glucose syrup

2 tsp of pure vanilla extract/essence

125g butter, cubed (4oz)

pinch or two of salt

flaked sea salt if desired for topping

Method

In a medium saucepan combine, sugar, water and glucose syrup. Stir together over a low heat until the sugar is dissolved.

Bring to boil, wash down any sugar crystals around the edge of sugar mixture with a damp pastry brush.

a damp pastry brush is used to wash down any sugar crystals

Reduce heat to low, (mixture should still be boiling) and boil without stirring for 7 to 10 minutes or until it reaches 170C (338F) on a candy thermometer. The mixture should be an amber colour.

a inexpensive candy thermometer is the easiest way to ensure accurate setting points. 

Remove saucepan from heat and with a wooden spoon stir in butter, vanilla and two pinches of salt (if your using salt on top reduce pinch of salt to one pinch).

Pour into oiled pan, make sure you do this in one pour... if you scrape the pan onto what you have poured it will leave marks/discoloration on the finished candy.

 Whilst the mixture is still fairly hot, score lines and sprinkle with sea salt. Scoring the lines allows for fairly neat breaks in the finished candy, however to get "perfect" pieces you have to score very deeply or use a candy mould with shapes of choice.

Allow to totally cool. Pop out of tin and package as desired. 

*glucose syrup is thick and very sticky, oil the measuring cup for ease of pouring.

* stir in 1 to 2 cups of dry roasted peanuts when adding the butter for butterscotch peanut brittle. 

Happy Baking :)

you might also be interested in liquid syrups 

you might also be interested in honey comb/sponge candy