Peach melba Eton Mess w/ brown sugar meringues

This recipe came to be by combining two of GJ’s favourite desserts, the sweet & sour Peach Melba and the multi-textured joy that is Eton Mess. Not only will it look stunning when you present it to friends & family, but it’ll taste scrumptious too! The inspiration came from a recent event where we invented our ‘Tropical Eton Mess’ – so we thought we’d play around and see what else we could come up with…

Use a quick cheat to make a Peach Melba Eton Mess at home – buy good mini meringues from most supermarkets, giving you more time to spend on perfecting your presentation.

Ingredients For the brown sugar meringues

• 2 egg whites

• 125g soft brown sugar

For the peaches

• 2 peaches, stoned, skinned & halved

• Approx 125ml water (to cover)

• ½ vanilla pod

• 100g caster sugar

• The juice of ½ a lemon

The rest

• 250g fresh raspberries

• 200g frozen summer berries

• 300ml double cream, whipped to soft peak

Special equipment

• 4 ‘Old Fashioned’ glasses / heavy bottomed tumblers

Method Making the meringues

1. First make your baby meringues. Pre-heat oven to 110C. Place egg whites in a very clean bowl and whisk to stiff peak. Now add the sugar to the meringue mix, a tablespoon at a time, while the beaters are still moving. Keep adding sugar slowly until it’s all incorporated. Now transfer to a piping bag.

2. Place some greaseproof paper on a baking sheet and pipe small meringues (around 2cm across) until all the mixture is gone. You want 3 to 4 per Eton Mess ideally. Place in the oven for 2 to 3 hours, until totally dried out.

3. NOTE. Your meringues can be made a day or so in advance, if you can keep them in an air tight container in a room with low humidity.

4. Pile meringue mixture onto a baking sheet with baking parchment, then place in the oven for 1.30hours-2hours. Or until dried out.

Poaching the Peaches

1. To poach the peaches, put the sugar, water, vanilla pod & lemon juice into a sauce pan and heat gently to allow sugar to dissolve. Now add the peach halves and gently poach until soft. How long this takes will depend on the ripeness of your peaches. If the peaches are very soft this’ll take no time at all.

2. Lift the peaches out of the syrup with a slotted spoon and retain the syrup. Slice each peach half into 4 lengthways.

Making the coulis

1. To make the coulis, place the frozen berries in the peach syrup mix and allow to defrost and reduce a little. Transfer to a blender and process until as smooth as possible.

2. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve to remove any pips and keep to one side. Again, this can be made a day or so in advance.

Plating Up

1. Place a little coulis in the bottom of the glass and crumble a meringue over it.

2. Place a whole meringue in the centre of the bottom of the glass and surround with fresh raspberries.

3. Top this layer with some blobs of fresh, whipped cream.

4. Now lay your peaches across as a layer, then crumble another meringue on top.

5. Next, another few blobs of cream, followed by a couple of baby meringues and an artistic drizzle of coulis!