Sunday afternoon - Meringues, Strawberries and Champagne!

Dear Readers,

Well! It is day five of five in the week-long Whimsy blog-a-thon and I am exhausted! (And full of cake.) Those avid readers amongst you may have thought that I'd given up on the final day but I do not intend to disappoint and bring you, in the final blog for this week, the most perfect chewy-on-the-inside crispy-on-the-outside Sunday Afternoon Meringues. Whilst I *have* blogged about meringues before, those were the super complex Swiss meringue method meringues  or the 'let's heat up a load of caster sugar first' meringues, whereas these are far simpler and ones that you can whisk up in a couple of hours.

Mise en place is key! Separate three large free range eggs ensuring the egg white is placed in a scrupulously clean metal bowl. Weigh 125g of caster sugar and 75g icing sugar (use golden icing sugar if you'd like your meringues to turn out wedding-dress-white and normal icing sugar if you's like them snow-white). Sieve the icing sugar so that when you sieve it again into the meringue mix layer it is super-super fine.

Whisk the egg whites until they form stiff peaks. You should whisk them for quite awhile really if you're after maximum volume.

Add the caster sugar a quarter at a time and whisk in thoroughly between each addition. The key here is to make sure the caster sugar is completely integrated before adding more. The mix will become increasingly thick and glossy and should look a bit like the pic below when it's ready.

Now sieve the icing sugar into the bowl and use a large metal spoon to fold it through. This is a little tricky as it feels wrong to fold icing sugar in when you've just spent ages whisking the meringue but have faith! It does not alter the volume you'll get from the finished delight. 

When it's fully integrated, it should look a bit like the pic below. (Note the creamier wedding-dress colour as I used golden icing sugar here, I think it looks nicer.)

Line a baking tray with silver foil and dollop little smurf-mounds of the mix onto the foil. 

Cook in the oven at 100 degrees (fan assisted) for one and a half hours. This mix makes twelve small meringues, and you could use the rest of the meringue to make a medium sized pavlova disc as below (or just make more meringue nests). You could go in for piping but I personally don't think it looks as nice. 

To serve the meringues, whip up some double cream with a tablespoon of icing sugar and a dash of vanilla and then sandwich two meringues together with the pillowy thick cream.

 Add some strawberries and a bottle of champagne and what more could you ask for?

Perfect Sunday Afternoon Tea (- tea + champagne)! This has been a five day blog-a-thon. I have been Silver Whimsy. Thank you and good night! x 

PS I think I'll be blogging again on Monday! x