I Wanna Be British: Eton Mess

I am a major Anglophile.

Most of the TV shows I watch are British. Many of my favorite bands and musicians are from England or are based there.

So what is a better way to show my English love than trying out some recipes.

ETON MESS 

Eton mess is a type of dessert that I have seen around the internet many times and thought: Yum!

I looked at a number of different recipes and adapted them for this experiment. Luckily I had my mom to assist in this culinary venture.

First, the day before we planned to make the actually dessert, I made a batch of meringues.

They do not look perfect but they taste great and anyway they get crumbled.

I used the same recipe that I made for the Les Miserables meringue cookies for the Tony awards. I just didn't use a bag to form them, I just plopped them onto a baking sheet with a spoon. I used this recipe.

After watching CupcakeJemma's Eton Mess video we planned on making a raspberry sauce.

We made the raspberry sauce first so that it would have time to cool

After cooking down the raspberries and sugar the sauce needed to be strained to remove the seeds. I only had this small strainer so it took a little time. Honestly I did not care for the raspberry sauce but my mom loved it. I guess it all depends on what you like if you want to add it to the final dessert or not.

Homemade whipping cream

This is my mom's specialty. It is basically heavy whipping cream, sugar and vanilla whipped together for what seems like ages. She doesn't even need to measure the ingredients which makes it difficult to share her recipe.

The recipes I read online for Eton Mess kept calling for double cream. I have never seen double cream in any store around here so heavy whipping cream seemed like a good substitute. Plus we use the homemade vanilla that we started a few years ago. Its a bottle of Vodka and split vanilla beans that sat in the dark and was shaken once a day for a few months until it became the best vanilla ever.

The other ingredient for Eton Mess is strawberries. Most recipes called for these strawberries to have sugar added and let sit until they became a sugary syrup. Some recipes said to smash the fresh strawberries.

We just bought a container of frozen strawberries already in sugar and called it good. We only had a few hours that she could hang at my house that day so some skimping was required.

Gathering all the ingredients together we started layering them in our glasses. A layer of crumbled meringue, some whipping cream, strawberries and repeat. Mom also added the raspberry sauce where she pleased.

The verdict: Delicious

 I do not know if this would be considered authentic Eton Mess. Regardless they came out so good. Sweet with just a hint of tart from the berries and a satisfying crunch from the meringues. Now I want to try out other recipes. ButterBeer I'm looking at you.