Eton Mess with Strawberry

I love the color red.  Anything with red catches my eye. Especially a dessert.  An Eton Mess is an English boarding school dessert that can be made many ways.  The main ingredients are fruit, whipped cream and meringue. In this version I use strawberries. Just seeing the red strawberries mixed against the rich white whipped cream just puts a smile of my face.  Makes a whole lot of yumminess! Two of my favorite cookbook authors, Ina Garten aka Barefoot Contessa and Nigella Lawson make wonderful versions of this recipe.  This recipe is listed in many British cookbooks as well.  I have made this with blueberries, raspberries and strawberries. So far the strawberry version is my favorite. In most recipes the whip cream, fruit and meringue are layered.  In my version I just mix everything together with extra strawberries on top.

Ingredients: 4 cups of strawberries, 8 -10 meringue cookies or shells (use vanilla flavor in this recipe), 2 cups of heavy whipping cream, 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract and 3 tablespoons of sugar. You can use vanilla sugar if you have some leaving out the vanilla extract. I never make  my own vanilla sugar which makes me pause to think that I should give that a try!  I also want to mention that in this recipe I used full fat heavy cream.  I am not a big fan of whip cream, but it just looks so darn pretty mixed with strawberries or in any other dessert really.  You can use half-and-half if you want to lighten it up some.  And let me mention that meringue cookies are already fat free without sacrificing flavor. :)

1. Cut the strawberries  and place in a non-reactive bowl. Then sprinkle 3 tabelspoons of sugar over the strawberries and give a stir.  Place non-stick wrap over bowl and place in fridge for 10 minutes or up to an hour so strawberries can macerate. Depending on how sweet you want the strawberries will determine how long you want to let them macerate.  This process with draw the natural sugar and juices out of the strawberries leaving you with sweet strawberries in their own juice.

2. While strawberries are macerating, put whip cream in mixer with a tablespoon of vanilla extract.  Whip until you have firm peaks.  This happens fast so do not walk away!

3. Once cream is whipped fold in up to a third of the strawberry mixture and crumbled meringue cookies. Put the mixture in any dessert dish you choose.  I like putting these kinds of desserts in different glasses just to mix it up! In the picture below you will see some in a stemless wine glass, a vintage milk glass and a dessert glass.  Just be creative and do whatever pleases you.  After filling your container put the rest of the strawberry mixture on top.  Like I mentioned before, this recipe usually calls for layering and that would be just as good if you choose to do it that way.

Enjoy!!!!