I found a recipe in October’s Food & Wine magazine for Eton Mess, a dessert often found in Windsor, England. It sounded good, so I went ahead and tried it out.

It’s a really simple dish, not too sweet and very tasty! I left out the pistachios, and started with vanilla meringues purchased at Trader Joe’s, instead of making my own as the recipe suggested.  I love fresh meringues – the bit of crunch and sweetness, and zero fat!

Anyway, here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:

2 C Heavy Whipping Cream
3/4 C Confectioner’s sugar
1/4 C thinly sliced mint leaves
2 pints Raspberries
3 Vanilla meringues (as I said, you can make your own – but this dessert was perfect with the Trader Joe’s version)
1 vanilla bean pod (I used 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract, as I did not have a bean pod on hand)

In mixing bowl, whip the cream into soft peaks. Add the vanilla extract and 1/2 C of the confectioner’s sugar to mix, and blend to thick peaks.

In separate bowl, mash about half the raspberries with remaining 1/4 of sugar. Leave the remaining berries whole. Fold mashed berries into whipped cream mixture.

Coarsely crumble 2 of the meringues, and stir into cream, along with the mint.

Spoon into cups/bowls, top with remaining berries and crumble the last meringue over the top. Enjoy!!

If you want to add the pistachios, take 1/2 C shelled and chopped pistachios, and sprinkle over top of dessert.

This week I also undertook to making up some butternut squash for Marco. The Beaba Babycooker finally made its debut! This thing is awesome, and super-easy to use. I put the squash into the steam basket, filled the steamer with the appropriate amount of water (handy chart included) and it steamed itself to perfect tenderness (automatic shut-off when finished!).

Then I just dumped the squash directly into the blender part (along with the cooking water) and blended it for 10 seconds.

Voila! The perfect puree for Marco! It tasted so good; I hope Marco likes it. Might have to use some of the extra for a soup.

Have you entered my giveaway yet?! Winner will chosen at random and announced on Monday, October 25th!! Go HERE to enter!