Spoons: Berries and cream meringue layer cake

Me and my Ma spent boxing day this year cooking up a storm in my nans kitchen. After having Christmas day at my nans place we were driving to our cousins place the day after boxing day for another Christmas dinner. We made cinnamon scrolls and this amazing layer cake. 

I followed this recipe from Women's Weekly with a couple of little alterations. 

1. Preheat Oven to about 120°C

2. Draw a 20cm circle on baking paper, use this paper to line 2 baking trays, grease paper and dust with some cornflour

3. In a small bowl combine two egg whites and 1/2 cup of sugar, beat with an electric mixer on high until thick and glossy then stir in an extra teaspoon of cornflour

3. Divide the mixture between the two baking trays, spreading to cover the circles

4. Bake for about one hour or until meringue is firm and dry, cool in oven with door ajar (this part is important because if the meringue cools down too quickly it may crack)

5. repeat steps 2 through 4 two more times giving you a total of six meringue rounds (you may want to make an extra one too in case you have any meringue mishaps) 

6. Whip your cream and vanilla until it forms soft peaks

7. Peel your first Meringues away from paper, spread cream on top and layer with berries, repeat for remaining layers

8. Arange remaining cream and berries on top of cake and 'dust' with grated chocolate flakes

You'll be amazing at how easy this actually is to make. The only thing is that it does take a long time because you have to make the six meringues. It also doesn't hurt if you make the meringue the day before you plan on making the cake, I did and it was perfectly fine.

Believe me when I say it even tastes better then it looks... 

Spoons: Mini Passionfruit Meringue Pies

Passionfruit is one of my all time favourite fruits, favourite anythings really. So when my mum came home from my great aunties with a large shopping bag full of them I was in heaven, heaven until I realised that my great uncle has picked them before they were ripe, so there was still a couple of weeks to wait. So this weekend we found that almost all of the passionfruits were ripe and we now had an overabundance of them sitting in my kitchen, I'm talking like 30 or 35 passionfruits. 

Naturally my instinct was hmmm what can I make with these, having made some lemon sorbet the night before (I'll post the recipe later) passionfruit sorbet was definately on the menu. However I wanted to make something else as well hence enter the Mini Passionfruit Meringue Pies. This recipe is adapted from a nestle advertisement recipe cards and is just one of the yummiest things ever.

             

What you'll need:

• 3/4 cup of sweetened Condensed milk (I try to look after my hips and use light condensed milk
• 1/4 cup of passionfruit pulp (or just over)
• 2 eggs, seperated
• Mini pastry cases (I'm not gonna lie I bought them instead of making them
• 1/3 cup of caster sugar

Now you should do this:

1. Preheat your oven to about 180°C. You know how your oven works so you can change this if you need too. 

2. Mix your condensed milk, passionfruit pulp and egg yolks together in a bowl. Make sure to mix well at this stage and set aside for later. 

3. To make the meringue you need to beat the egg-whites until they form stiff peaks, once this occurs you can gradually beat in the sugar until it is all dissolved and the mixture looks thick and fluffy and lovely, kinda like clouds oh and that picture below. 

4. now that you have all parts of the pie prepared, (oh and if your a little less lazy than me you should have already had your pastry cases made) firstly spoon the passion fruit filling equally into the cases first, followed by the meringue mixture on top. It's a good idea for the meringue to use a little scraper to help you 'sculpt'...sculpt?... yepp lets go with sculpt, sculpt your meringue.

5. Bake for about 10 or 12 minutes or until your oven makes those cute meringue sculptures (yes sculptures) light and golden

6. Enjoy!!! 

7. Confess to your blog that you ate all the pies before you thought of taking a photo to show people. Sorry they were just too yummy!!