- Hey, I'm John Kanell,
and today on Preppy Kitchen
we're making Eton Mess, a symphony
of strawberries, whipped cream,
and meringue, so let's get started.
First off, a little bit about the meringue cookies.
These are light, crunchy and amazing,
but they can be difficult to find.
I can't get them at my market.
So I'm gonna show you how to make them.
It's really fun and easy.
If you have 'em on hand, just skip ahead
to the time code below.
Into your mixer we're gonna add four egg whites,
no yolks in this, this needs to whip up
to be amazing, light and fluffy.
One word about meringues, they can be a little bit difficult
if it's really rainy outside or very high humidity.
You want a dry day for the most perfect meringue possible.
However, we are gonna be crunching them
up into this Eton Mess, so no one will know
if they look less than great.
Right now, I'm adding a quarter teaspoon
of cream of tartar right into the egg whites.
It's an acid that'll help stabilize them.
I'm also adding a pinch of salt for contrast,
and we're gonna start mixing this up.
While it mixes, start on low,
I'm gonna add one cup of sugar,
and for the best meringue possible, use super fine sugar.
It has a finer grain, closer to powdered sugar almost,
and it'll dissolve into your egg whites really easily.
Once your egg whites are frothed up,
we're gonna start adding our sugar in,
and the key to an nice meringue is,
just to go slow, don't dump it in.
That'll deflate the egg whites.
It's too much sugar.
Add it in gradually, pretend you have
all the time in the world.
It's getting close, right now it's at a soft peak stage,
but I want beautiful, marshmallowy, stiff peaks.
And the sugar is just about done.
Let's check this out and see what it looks like right now.
So, it's a little bit soft.
While it finishes mixing, I'm gonna add
just a kiss of vanilla for a little bit of extra flavor.
This is a stiff peak.
You can tell, 'cause if you look inside,
that peak is completely like marshmallows, basically.
If you haven't had Eton Mess before,
it's not a super sweet dessert.
The sweetness really comes from those strawberries
macerated with the sugar, the whipped cream
just barely sweet, mostly creamy and light.
And the meringues are here to give you
airy, crunchy amazingness.
You're gonna love this recipe.
It's one of those things you can just keep eating
and you're like, "Oh, it's so light and delicious."
Meanwhile, you ate like five million cups
of whipped cream, strawberries and meringues.
That's a good thing. (bell dings)
Preheat your oven to 200 degrees.
Low and slow is the way for meringue.
Now you want a nice star tip.
I'm using an 869, it's one of my all time favorites.
Piping these is the most fun ever,
and it's one of the reasons I just refuse
to buy meringues, I have to make them.
Fill your piping bag and try to get no air bubbles.
Add a dab of meringue onto your baking sheet.
This will just be the glue to help hold the paper on.
Now we're gonna pipe our meringue kisses.
The shape doesn't matter as much,
because we're gonna crumble them,
but I'll show you how to do it the right way.
Hold your piping tip just a little bit above the paper
squeeze and lift, and you'll get a perfect little kiss.
So you hold it above, squeeze,
and then stop squeezing the bag and lift off.
There we go, and just continue
until all your meringue is used.
So this dessert's called an Eton Mess.
It's named after Eaton College.
It's a classic English dessert.
And sometimes it's known as a school kid's dessert.
If you know exactly when Eton Mess was created,
can you please let me know in the comments,
because I was reading many different things.
It was served at a match between Eaton and Harrow,
and that was in like 1930, but I don't think
it was created in 1930, I think it's older.
And on The Giled Age on HBO, it's a show I love,
they served it at dinner and that's the Gilded Age,
which is much further away from 1930 than you can imagine.
There we go, one done, one to go.
These are so pretty, and this will make more meringues
than you need for your Eton Mess,
but you could make more Eton Mess, or save these for later.
They'll keep in an airtight container
for well over two weeks.
Our meringue cookies go into the oven
200 degrees for one hour in the center rack.
Then turn the oven off, and leave it in the oven, closed,
for one to two more hours to completely dry them out.
(clock ticking)
Once your beautiful meringue cookies have been obtained,
you only need 16 of them, so you have some
for snacking on, and giving away later.
You could also double this recipe
really easily to serve a big crowd.
Now we're gonna grab one and a half pounds of strawberries,
giving them a nice soak just to wash off
anything I don't want to eat.
I'm gonna drain these out.
I need to hull all of these,
so just remove that top bit.
And I will say that Eton Mess is one
of those amazing seasonal dishes
that just shines when you have
the best strawberries possible.
You can make these with winter strawberries.
I've done it, it's still delicious,
but the best Eton Mess is with those
summer sweet strawberries that are almost falling apart.
If you can't get strawberries,
you can make this with other berries too.
It works really well with basically any berry.
I'm really just removing the leaves from the strawberry.
I don't wanna waste too much of those
delicious strawberry fruit pieces.
Eton Mess is so simple.
It really just has three components:
the meringue, whipped cream, and strawberries,
but by doing a few things with these components,
you create a wonderful symphony of light, amazing flavors
with a contrast of textures, you have creamy,
you have amazing berryness,
and you have the crunchy meringues.
Each spoonful is delicious.
Okay, my strawberries are hulled.
One third of the strawberries are going into a bowl,
and if you can, choose the most
ripe strawberries for this part.
The strawberries in your bowl are getting smashed.
You could use a fork, you could use a muddler.
You could even blend them up if you wanted to.
But I do not wanna get the blender out right now,
and there's no need, it's so easy.
By smashing them, we're having the strawberries release
a ton of juice, so it's gonna be another nice texture.
These look great.
The remaining strawberries get quartered,
ao they're gonna be nice and small pieces
that'll fit on a spoon with some other delicious things.
Just quarter them and pop 'em into the bowl.
The smashing part is great for the little kids to help
in the kitchen, especially if you wanna
put some idle hands to work.
I'm about to turn this bowl
into delicious macerated strawberries, two different ways.
First of all, I'm gonna add one cup
of super fine sugar to my berries.
Do you have to use super fine sugar?
No, you do not, you could use granulated sugar.
The super fine dissolves really nicely.
and you're not gonna have any grainy bits,
but if you only have granulated sugar, it will work as well.
Or, you could process or blend your sugar.
It'll make it super fine, basically.
The sugar is gonna draw liquid out of the strawberries
and give you a wonderful, sweet strawberry juice.
This just needs about 10 minutes to sit.
Brian likes a classic Eton Mess.
I like mine with a few extra ingredients.
So I'm gonna divide this into two batches
and you can see some ways to gussy it up.
One batch is for me.
I'm adding a little bit of orange zest to this.
Also adding in just a splash of a nice orange liquor.
Mix that up and let it hang out for 10 minutes.
In the meantime, we're gonna make our whipped cream,
grab our dessert cups, and get to assembling.
(bell dings)
I'm adding two cups of cold, heavy cream into a large bowl.
This has actually been in the freezer
for a few minutes, and so it cools down.
It helps everything whip up quicker.
I'm also adding in two teaspoons of that super fine sugar.
At this stage, you could have used granulated
or even powdered sugar, and I'm gonna whip this up
until it is nice, soft, luscious peaks.
You can also add in a drop of vanilla, half to one teaspoon,
and just give a little bit more flavor if you want to.
Your whipped cream will start thickening up,
and once it does, keep a very careful eye on it,
because it'll overwhip really quickly.
My beaters are leaving a trail in my whipped cream.
Then I finish it off by hand.
There we go, nice soft peaks it's not just
falling off of my whisk, it's holding its shape.
Now, we can assemble.
I just tasted my fancier version,
and I realized it could use a splash
of elderflower liqueur, now we are talking, just mix it up.
And the one thing we have to do is crush our meringues,
but I want this to look like a beautiful dessert,
and Eton Mess can be kind of a mess.
You're gonna carefully break yours up
and try to get some of these tips off without breaking,
or at least find some pieces that look pretty.
We're gonna stick those on top and just give the appearance
of a beautiful thought out dessert.
(meringue snapping)
There we go, just like that.
Half our meringues are getting straight up crushed.
(meringues crunching)
Just you can crush them like this
between two bowls, or have some fun with it. (laughing)
You basically just want small pieces like this.
They're gonna float in your mixture.
The rest of your meringues get chopped up or just smashed,
like I'm doing it, into larger pieces.
They'll give you some crunch
for the creamy moments to contrast with.
I'm gonna assemble these two different ways for you.
One in a big cup, one in a fancy little coupe dessert glass.
We're gonna start off by adding
some whipped cream to the bottom.
The one thing is, try not to smear the walls of your glass
with too much of the whipped cream or strawberries.
Add your strawberries in.
Now, some of your meringue, more cream,
more strawberries, some more meringue, some more cream.
in this dessert is so generous and you can make this
up to three hours ahead of time.
I think it's best served if immediately
after assembling though, because at that point
the meringue is at its crunchiest.
And now, as I promised, a few of my beautiful broken pieces
on top, just to show you this dessert has
so many delicious things inside.
Mine, I tasted the strawberries
with the elderflower liqueur in it, so good.
It's the same process, if you're using a little glass.
You're just gonna have smaller layers.
By the way, if you're like me and you love whipped cream,
you could double the whipped cream in this
and have very generously appointed
whipped creamy moments, which reminds me,
take some of the strawberry juice
and drizzle it over the top, just like that.
Which do you like better?
You'll have to try it on your own
but I'm gonna try this one right now.
(gentle upbeat music)
Perfectly light, creamy, crunchy, berry amazingness.
It's a kiss of summer in a cup.
The classic is amazing too.
Try both, let me know which you like better.
I hope you get a chance to make this.
And if you like this video,
check out my summer dessert playlist.