Crushed Whispers Set Amidst an Eton Mess

Variation on Eton Mess with Chewy Meringues, Whipped Cream and Crushed Whispers 

The question of dessert can be a very vexing one. Sure, you are wanting to serve your guests something delicious, but - at the same time - it needs to complement the entire meal. So, for instance, if you are serving a hearty but clear vegetable soup on a cold winter's night, it makes sense to end off with a hot, decadent but solidly satisfying dessert such as a home-made cinnamon bun slathered with a citrus-infused, cream-cheese frosting,  or a slice of rhubarb crumble served with a dollop of custard on the side. These desserts go with "the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" (John Keats) and are best served warm, straight from the oven to the table, with a freshly-made pot of coffee on the side. 


If, however, glorious hot summer is upon you, the flowers are wilting, the ladies glowing and the sounds of the fan a monotonous drone in your ear; if, on such a day and occasion you have already served your special guests a relatively heavy-weight meal such  as a home-made pizza or pasta, albeit it with a freshly plucked, flower-strewn salad on the side, why then, you may think to delight them with something light, frothy and foamy - and dare we say - even slightly frivolous, to end their repast? Furthermore, at such a luxuriously relaxed lunch you can forego the coffee entirely and select a sweet, chilled dessert wine to pair with your chosen finale. At such a lovely lunch on a sultry Sunday afternoon, an Eton Mess, compleat with Crushed Whispers, can provide light relief from the vicissitudes of both the week preceding  and the week ahead.  

Truth to tell, I've had more smacking of lips and scraping of plates in relation to this dessert than any other; it seems to love being relished - in large part, probably due to the fact that it is so unpretentious a dessert that it begs to be enjoyed whole-heartedly and without any artifice or defence. 

If, however, I am allowed to say one thing, and one thing only, this I will advocate and it is simply this:  The main, overwhelming, indeed predominant reason I believe my guests enjoy this particular dessert so very, very much can almost entirely be attributed to the fact that I make my own, home-baked, melt-in-the-mouth, chewy meringues that are, at one and the same time, wonderfully tender, appealingly crispy, and ever-so-slightly, dizzyingly chewy. 

Texture is just so very fundamental to the enjoyment of food, and such attention to mouth sensations differentiates a great meal from one that is merely adequate. As an almost aside, uniqueness cannot be discounted; hence it is a most satisfactory outcome to both host and guest to serve something a little bit out of the ordinary; hence this particular dessert satisfies on a number of levels, not least by originality.

That said, many chefs either go overboard in assembling too many textures and flavours on a plate, or too few. Whatever you do, you want your tastes and textures and colours to harmonise in the end, not have chewy bits that you can't get rid of, or flavours, textures, colours or smells that fight one another or, worse still, dominate like an out-of-control, insecure Shades of Grey. Last week, for instance, I ordered a Ploughman's Lunch at a restaurant, and while the pickled cauliflower and beans were delicious, and the cheese was equally delicious - you simply could not eat the two of them together. A soft, bland, lightly flavoured, wax-coated cheese simply cannot compete on taste or texture with a crisp, vinegary pickle. No, what was needed in that instance was a very strong, slightly crumbly cheese such as a very mature cheddar, which could not only withstand, but rise to the challenge thrown down by the robust flavours of the pickles, and which would have been perfectly complemented by the hearty slice of seed-loaf bread that accompanied it. 

While it is very dissatisfying when too little thought is given to ensembles, and no care given to the quality of ingredients, it is almost more disappointing when each ingredient is perfect in itself, but together they simply don't work. I blame the language of the food chefs a bit in this; that and an overwhelmingly experimentalist stance that forgets to consider the whole in creating a "medley of flavours". Food is a meant to represent not merely a "varied mixture of  things; a miscellany" but a well-thought through assemblage wherein the whole, though made up of perfect parts, is all the better for being put together, and what you are given to eat is not simply an array of oddities or peculiar food combinations. Be experimental, certainly - but do throw out your failures and not inflict them on others, please. 

But I digress. Forgive me.

One of the best things about this dessert is the fact that most of it can be made before-hand. Not too long before-hand - for best effects I make the meringues the night before (and leave to cool overnight in the oven) and then you always must whip the cream just before you assemble the dessert (or plate it, in dining room parlance) and carry it through to your guests, sitting relaxed and replete in the dining room. 

Yes, you can plate it ahead of time. But I will leave you alone to deal with the real mess of soggy meringues and split whipped cream that has divided into liquid on the one side and solids on the other. 

Step-by-step instructions to making meringues that are crisp on the outside but tender and indeed slightly chewy on the inside are detailed in this blog post: melt-in-the-mouth, chewy meringues.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that you really do not want to go out and buy meringues for this;  as with so many other things, "preparation is all" (Shakespeare).  
Whilst our thoughts are on preparing all, just do remember that you will know when you have whipped the egg-white enough when you can turn the bowl upside-down without untoward consequence (unless you hold it as such too long, gravity cannot be defied forever): 

Whipped egg white won't fall out the bowl easily - one way of checking if it is whipped enough 

Since dessert is not interior design, and people like to see a variety of colours and textures, appealing to both eye and mouth sensations, colour is very important. In other words, white-on-white is, in this instance, not advocated. Besides, it is helpful for your guests to be able to differentiate between meringue and whipped cream, it helps them spoon up a nice variety of flavours, colours and textures with each mouthful they enjoy. I therefore tend to colour the meringues. You don't have to, but  it's fun and frivolous and where are we without a little bit of celebration in this life of ours? For that matter, I am liberal with my favourite flavourant, in this case, vanilla:

Meringue mixture with pink food gel and vanilla essence 

Generally speaking, when it comes to colour, I am not amiss to a slightly streaky effect, particularly in relation to a range of lavenders; however, when my girl-child becomes involved in production, singular colours are preferred, mostly in the range of pink, pink or pink: 

Note the wonderful texture produced in a meringue with vinegar and corn-starch, which  will remain slightly chewy in the middle. 

Having sufficiently induced within you an enhanced appreciation for the merits of delightfully chewy meringues, may I similarly impress upon you the virtues of adding a little, just a very little - a mere modicum in fact - of castor sugar to the whipped cream added to a dessert such as this. My personal preference it to add some vanilla castor sugar, which you can make at home by popping vanilla pods into a jar of castor sugar: 

Vanilla pods exude their heady smell into the castor sugar 

Why castor sugar? I hear you ask (as opposed to ordinary sugar). Well, frankly, because vanilla is expensive, and castor sugar is essential in the creation of desserts such as meringues and in whipped cream (you really don't want to crunch down on sugar, or have it fall to the bottom of the meringue). In other words, since the structure of the sugar grain is important in terms of suspension in cream or egg white, and in the texture of fluffy cakes where you mix castor sugar with butter, it makes most sense to add your expensive flavourant to the most useful sugar in your dessert cupboard, and one, moreover, where the addition of vanilla will not be overwhelmed by the caramel, treacly and molasses tones exuded by soft muscovado sugar, for instance. 

Whip the cream until marks are made in the cream; you can have whip it further until it is more stiff or leave it slightly foamy and more liquid, it's all a matter of personal preference.  However, if you prefer to follow a recipe, here is are the proper proportions for whipped cream with vanilla castor sugar:

Fresh Cream is best whipped until marks appear (still sounds somewhat Fifty Shades of Grey) 

You can whip the cream some more stiff (just be careful you don't turn it into butter), or you can leave it slightly foamy and more liquid, it's all a matter of personal preference. 

In terms of chocolate balls, I'm a sucker for Whispers myself:

Whispers work because they have a thick coating of chocolate and meltingly tender innards 

Crushing the Whispers is easy if you know how - just haul out your rolling pin, stash the packet into a plastic bag, call the kids, and voilà! (The reason you put the chocolates in the plastic bag is not merely to keep the chocolate balls from bouncing everywhere, it's also to prevent rapid and hitherto scientifically unexplained vaporisation of said chocolate balls when in the vicinity of busy little fingers). 

Crushed Whispers: sounds like it should be a British Boy Band from the 1980s 

Once stirred, the Eton Mess with Chocolate Balls looks, well, not as if it would get any prizes on a celebrity chef show, but do not let that deter you in the slightest, just listen to your guests' sounds of appreciation, particularly listening for the sound of them smacking their lips together, and simply and bask in their happiness.

Meringue, Chocolate, Cream: Perfection 

Dessert, anyone?