Meringues with Summer Fruits Coulis

Last week I cooked dinner for my family. I recently bought Mary Berry's Cookery Course so knew I wanted to make one of the recipes from that. I decided on the Thai green curry for main course and meringues with raspberry coulis for dessert. I thought I'd share my adapted recipe for the meringues with you!

The recipe in the book uses a raspberry coulis, however I decided to change this to a summer fruits coulis as a) it's cheaper and b) it adds more of a mix of flavours to the coulis. 

I first made the meringues as they take around 40 minutes in the oven. I've always enjoyed making meringues, the consistency of them is so different to anything else that you could make. While they were in the oven, I cracked on with the coulis. This was a lot trickier than the meringues as it required puréeing the fruit, then sieving to get any seeds out. I found the sieving the most time consuming as I was using summer fruits (raspberries, blackberries, red currants etc.) which meant there were a lot more seeds to get rid of. 

Once the meringues had cooled down after being taken out of the oven, I whipped the double cream and used a palette knife to spread them between the meringues to make little meringue sandwiches. I then put four of the six meringues I made on separate plates, poured the coulis over them and placed some fruit next to them. 

(sorry for the quality of the photo, it was taken quickly on an iPhone)

I was very happy with the way they turned out, they tasted delicious and were really light which was nice after the curry. My Mum even said they were the best meringues she'd tasted which was a real compliment!

Here is my adapted recipe:

Meringues with Summer Fruits Coulis

Ingredients: 

2 egg whites (room temp)

100g caster sugar

450ml double or whipping cream

300g summer fruits (to serve)

For the coulis:

300g summer fruits

juice of 1/2 lemon

icing sugar

Method:

1) Place the egg whites in a bowl and whisk with an electric mixer on full speed until stiff. Add the sugar, 1 teaspoon at a time, continuing to whisk until the whites are glossy.

2) Cover a baking tray with a piece of baking parchment. Place 8 individual dessert spoonfuls of the mixture onto the paper, making swirls with the back of the spoon. 

3) Bake for 45 minutes to an hour until firm and crisp. Lift one to check that it comes off the paper easily. Leave the meringues to cool slightly, then place them on a cooling rack.

4) While the meringues are in the oven, make the coulis. Purée the summer fruits in a food processor then rub the purée through a sieve to remove the seeds. I found pouring a little in at a time, then rubbing with a spoon helped.

5) Add the lemon juice, then sweeten to taste with icing sugar. Cover and chill until ready to serve.

6) Whip the cream until it is thick. Sandwich the meringues together in pairs, with the cream in the middle.

7) Place a meringue on each of the dessert plates, then pour the coulis over slightly, creating a pool at the side of each meringue. 

8) Divide the summer fruits between the plates, placing them alongside the meringues.  

Bye for now! xx