Eton Mess

I rarely make deserts. But with all of the egg whites I had left over from my failed attempts at making pasta (Mr. Oliver wanted a half a dozen egg yolks), a meringue was an obvious and delicious choice. Plus it allowed Mr. Oliver to redeem himself from his result-less pasta recipe.

To start, you have to make the meringue. Now this really isn't difficult. All you have to do is make sure that you whip the egg whites and sugar long enough so that the sugar is completely dissolved. You then have to decide if you prefer a spongy or a chewy meringue. By spongy I mean the stuff you find piled a mile high on top of lemon pie (look at me, I'm a poet). I prefer a chewy meringue so I make a flat meringue or many little meringues. Basically, I'm just trying to increase the amount of crust I'll have.

For the Eton Mess, yet another recipe from Mr. Oliver's Cook with Jamie, you need to bash or mush up the meringue (depending on whether you have a chewy or spongy meringue). You then whip some whipping cream up and mix it with fruit and a small bit of balsamic vinegar. You could put vanilla in your cream or in the meringue as well as alot of other flavours but I didn't have any vanilla and I thought that simple would be best. I wasn't wrong.

For the fruit, I had some yellow prunes, pears and grapes. I don't see why you can't make up your own mix. Mash up half of the fruit in with the balsamic vinegar and leave the other in chunks. Then just mix the fruit, fruit mixture and cream together and layer with the bashed up meringue. It's relatively light as far as deserts go but it's oh so delicious.

Cream, fruit and sugar. There's no way you can go wrong.