San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Celebrate a festive Fourth of July by making this billowy, summery dream of a dessert.
Strawberries, blueberries and billows of rich cream are summer perfection in a cup
As the story goes, someone brought pavlova to a picnic. Pavlova, a meringue dessert named for a Russian ballerina, is not what I would pack for an alfresco feast, but perhaps it’s just the thing to accompany the viewing of a cricket match at Eton College in England. In any case, someone at the gathering purportedly sat on the dessert, crushing the pillowy pile of meringue, fruit and cream. The resulting sweet was renamed “Eton Mess,” and served anyway.
I don’t believe the story, but I do believe that Eton Mess is worth adding to your summer dessert repertoire because it, with its billows of whipped cream, ribbons of fruit and crumbles of meringue, is the cloudlike dessert of my summer dreams. It’s a sort of louche, casual version of pavlova, less fussy but no less magnificent.
To make it, you must first make the meringue. It’s not difficult, but it bakes for a long time, slowly drying until it has a crackly exterior and a soft, chewy interior. This might take six hours at 200 degrees, and unfortunately meringue does not hold well at room temperature, as humidity is the enemy. It does, however, keep very well in the dry conditions of your home freezer, so you can make the meringue ahead, then wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and freeze it. Even if it gets a little crushed, that’s no problem, since you’re going to crush it later anyway, and it does not need to be thawed before using. If you still can’t be bothered, you could try making Eton Mess with storebought meringue cookies, but I do encourage you to try making meringue from scratch at least once in your life, if only to witness the transformation of eggs and sugar into something marvelous right before your eyes.
I like to roast strawberries until they are chewy, concentrated flavor bombs, but you could also make a simpler version of this dessert using handfuls of ripe raspberries or blackberries or mulberries or blueberries, or try a rendition with roasted apricot quarters, or nectarines. While a classic Eton Mess binds meringue and fruit with sweetened whipped cream, I like to add a bit of plain Greek yogurt or labne to the cream before whipping — I find the tangy cream is a nice foil for the sweet berries and meringue.
When it comes time to serve, it’s simply a matter of crumbling the meringue into small pieces, larger pieces and crumbles, folding in the cream and then dropping in the berries (and, if you’ve roasted them, a drizzle of the accumulated juices). I give it one more light fold to just incorporate the berries, a ribbon of fruit. If you mix too much at this stage, the mess just gets messier and turns pink, but that is not the end of the world. Sometimes I contrast the roasted berries with a handful of fresh; you might choose to add blueberries for a red, white and blue dessert to match the colors of both the American flag and the Union Jack.
Jessica Battilana is a freelance writer and the author of “Repertoire: All the Recipes You Need.” Instagram: Email: food@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jbattilana