Meringue, dulce de leche and cream… what’s not to like?

After I’d made the dulce de leche, the important thing was , first of all to use it and secondly, use it sensibly to get as much joy as possible from eating it for as long as possible.

It would be so easy just to spoon it down…. but I resisted and set to, thinking about what to do with it all.

It just so happened that we were going to a barbecue with our friends and I had promised to make the desserts. An ideal opportunity to make something truly delicious…..I had once made a rather delicious meringue, cream and dulce de leche dessert when we had everyone round to out house. I’d bought the dulce de leche then, of course, I wouldn’t have dreamed of making my own.

I’m sure there should be a name for this but I don’t know what it is… think Pavlova base, spoonfuls of dulce de leche, piles of whipped cream, studded with little nuggets of the best fudge you can get…. mouth watering yet?

It’s not a Pavlova, of course, because Pavlova has fruit as a sharp contrast to the sweet crunchy and chewy (yes, a good meringue should be like that!) base and the smoothness of the cream.

This was going to be sweetness personified, mellowed with the whipped cream. That was good though, because the people that were going to eat it have a distinct liking for sweet things. Anyway, it was a good day – we would be meeting with our friends, the weather was marvellous and a barbecue was planned. The fact that the World Cup was on that afternoon seemed to heighten the joy of some people….

So, first things first. I needed to make the meringue base.

Start by preheating the oven – 150 degrees C (130 if it is a fan oven) or 300 degrees F.

Make sure you have a good baking tray and line it with either baking parchment or a silicone liner. You will need something like that so you can peel the meringue off when it has cooked.

The important thing about making meringues is that you must – absolutely MUST – make sure there’s not a speck of fat in the egg whites. So when you are separating the eggs be careful, very careful. Make sure the bowl you will be using is spotlessly clean.

When I make meringue, I use my copper bowl.  My all round hero food-guru, Harold McGee told me to do so because it stabilises the egg whites and makes a better foam with less risk of it all collapsing. It’s not just a wild fancy to have yet more gorgeous kitchen equipment, you know… it does work.  You don’t have to have one but I bought that back in the days when I had a well-paid job and I  could indulge myself.

If you haven’t got one, don’t worry. A pinch of cream of tartar can do the job of stabilising just as well.

The important thing is that you whisk the whites well, no matter what bowl you are using.

Three egg whites in a spotlessly clean bowl can be whisked to meringue perfection in a few minutes. 

Before you start whisking, though, weigh out your sugar – you need 175g/6oz of caster sugar (which for those of you in Canada – Lorraine- or America, means super fine sugar.) When it is time to start adding the sugar, little by little, you want to have everything ready.

Whip until the egg whites have formed soft peaks and you can tip the bowl up without it all falling out. Only then do you start to add in the sugar, bit by bit.

You can see the whites becoming glossy

When everything has been whisked together and you have a mound of glossy, white fluffed up meringue mix, spoon it out onto the parchment or the silicone liner, making a circle as the base. Some people draw circles on the paper to make sure they get a proper circle but I never do. It’s a meringue for goodness sake… it is going to be pillowy and blowsy and laden with whipped cream. We aren’t talking architecturally precise. I like the organic look of it when it comes out – so very obviously not manufactured in an industrial complex.

Once you have the circle, you make a sort of blobbed wall around the edge with more spoonfuls of meringue. You are supposed to twirl each blob round with a cocktail stick to make little pointed swirls of meringue…. but….

And this is a big but.

Normally my meringues are fine. But normally I am not attempting to make then in a boiling hot kitchen on one of the hottest days of the year (31 degrees C) with lots of humidity.

Humidity is the killer of meringues. I waited until 8 at night in the hope the weather would break and the humidity lessen.. but it didn’t happen. I had to have the not-really pavlova ready for the next day. I had to get cracking.

Reasoning that it would be OK, if not as beautiful, I got on with it. Into the oven it went and the temperature was immediately turned down to 275 degrees F/140 degrees C/120 degrees fan assisted.

It was going to take an hour to cook and once that hour was up, the oven is switched off and the meringue left there overnight. That lets it dry out perfectly.

So, the next morning, I opened the oven to take out the base.

Ah. It was as I thought. As I knew really, when I first put it onto the baking sheet. Despite whisking and using my copper bowl that dratted hot and wet air had wreaked havoc. It was OK but it wasn’t billowing into crisp peaks of perfection.

 It wasn’t the most beautiful meringue I have ever made but, what the heck. It was going to be the most delicious meringue I’d ever made and that’s what counts.

The next day was brighter and hotter than ever. I carefully peeled off the silicone paper and put the meringue onto a plate so I could take it to J’s house.

Once there, while he and N busied themselves with the barbecue, I spooned the delicious dulce lecheover the base of the meringue.

Just look at it….. thick and rich and caramelly

Next, great luscious spoonfuls of whipped cream

Then, pieces of delicious fudge scattered over the top….

And more whipped cream on that.

It was delicious. It was a triumph.

Which is more than you can say for the football.

England were out of the World Cup but the not-really pavlova was a winner. Not a scrap left. Depite it not being the most beautiful meringue base ever.

Don’t despair if your meringue isn’t perfect. Looks aren’t everything you know. Taste is.

Maggie’s Lemon Drizzle Cake … an homage to my aunt

As some of you know, my aunt passed away a few weeks ago. What you might not know is just how much of an influence she was on my life.

When I started this blog, I told you how I had spent a lot of my life not cooking. I ate, obviously, but I got other people to cook for me. I didn’t need to cook as I lived on my own and anyway, I was always travelling. I ate in great restaurants and had a marvellous time.

I come from a family that always celebrate things with a family meal. Every occasion was marked with a get together. My mother and my aunt used to swap occasions… Christmas Day, one of them would cook, Boxing Day, the other would do it. Whoever did New Year wouldn’t do Easter. Everybody’s birthdays were a reason to come together as a family and eat.

My aunt was a great cook and always made the most superb cakes. Her Christmas pudding really couldn’t be beaten and, since I started cooking,  I always used to ask for some to take home with me so I could use it in Christmas Pudding Icecream. She always believed that a person should be able to cook and, more to the point, be able to cook well.

She was so pleased when I started cooking and asking her how things were done. I used to ring her from my car as I drove the thousands of miles I used to do on motorways in my other job. She would tell me how I was supposed to make things and patiently go through the shopping I would need to get in order to make whatever it was she was helping me with. I would stop in some far away town, get my ingredients and carry on driving home. Then, when I got there, I’d ring her again and check I had everything right in my head.

She was the one who taught me how to cook ham properly….. she taught all of us.  My brother adapted her recipe and came up with Gingery. Which is, in our eyes at least, possibly the world’s most delicious roast ham. Her daughter, my cousin, has been baking for years and is the maker of the world’s most delicious chocolate cakes which pleases her sons and her nephew no end. My aunt was never happier than helping people learn – she was a teacher all of her life. She even taught my postman when he was a little boy and whenever I saw him he would always send his best wishes and tell me that my aunt and uncle were the best teachers in that school.

Anyway, while my cousin and I were sorting things out at my aunt’s house, she dragged me to a bookcase and said she had found this….

………An ancient copy of Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management.

My cousin said she wanted me to have it, tattered though it was, because it was something my aunt had had for years. It’s falling apart, as you can see and the covers are hanging off. I wish I’d asked my aunt about the book … who it belonged to before her and what she had learnt from it….anyway, I have it now and it is on my cookery bookshelves. You never know, it might get picked on the next round of Cookery Lotto!  How proud she would have been to think that I was even contemplating cooking something from it.

The very first cake she taught me to make was her simple and delicious Lemon Drizzle cake. I found the recipe in my cook book, scrawled on a piece of paper. She will have dictated that to me as I, no doubt, sat in the car at some motorway services, parked up in the rain.

I think she chose that as it is the simplest cake in the world to make and if she was going to entice me into the world of baking, she would need to make sure that I could manage. I think she was reckoning on a small cake, emerging triumphantly from the oven, would be the first in a line of cakes.

And, I suppose, in a way, it was. I decided, this weekend, to bake the Lemon Drizzle cake because it reminded me of her.

The ingredient list was simple and concise – 4 oz each of soft butter, caster sugar, self raising flour and a couple of large eggs. How hard could that be? And some lemons for the lovely drizzle to be poured over the top.

My note did say to cream the butter and sugar together and I’m certain she meant doing it with a wooden spoon… but you see the Kitchen Aid mixer? She bought me that as my wedding present. I have to use it, then, don’t I? I think she realised by the time I eventually got married that I was turning into a cook and a Kitchen Aid was going to be far more use to me in my married life than some standard wedding present of crystal or maybe bed linen. It was an incredibly generous gift, from an incredibly generous aunt.

A couple of the brilliantly golden-yolked free range eggs turn the mix into a vibrant yellow. Finely grate some lemon zest in there – you will be using the lemons later. Just remember to make sure you used unwaxed lemons and if you don’t, give the lemons a good scrubbing first.

That 4 oz of flour (she told me to sieve it) was folded in and then everything put into a lined loaf tin.

Those silcone paper tin liners are an absolute godsend. No more snipping about with pieces of greaseproof paper or baking parchment… the hours they must save across the world!

And into the oven for about 30-40 minutes at 140-150 degrees.

Now to make the lemon drizzle…

That too, is simple…. Just the juice of one and a half lemons and some icing sugar – a good 2 ounces.

(I know that whenever you see chefs on the TV they squeeze lemons in their hands but I always use that glass lemon juicer. I don’t think you need to get your fingers covered in juice and besides, the pips will always drop in whatever it is you are making. Anyway, you get far more juice out of the lemon or the lime with one of them than you do by just squeezing. Maybe my hands aren’t strong enough? )

Heat it gently in a pan until the icing sugar dissolves.

Then let it cool.

At the end of the cooking time, take the cake out and peel back the paper to let it cool for ten minutes or so.

Once that’s done, take a fork and prick over the surface of the cake

This will let the lemon sugar syrup sink in when you gently drizzle it over the surface.

And there you have it.

The simplest cake in the world… but also one of the most delicious.

Golden cake with a lovely, sweetly sharp lemon drizzle. The first cake I made and one that will always remind me of my darling aunt.

Thanks for everything, Maggie.