Mini Pavlovas with Strawberries and Mascarpone

One of the things you quickly learn on the cheat’s trail is to read labels very carefully, one glance at a long exhaustive list of strange sounding ingredients is enough for me to whack it straight back on a shelf and quickly move on. It’s for this reason Marks and Spencer meringue nests have won a high accolade from me. Ingredients listed on the packet are sugar and egg whites and since that’s all that goes into a meringue anyway what you’re actually buying is the real thing but without all the bother. They even have that home-made pale honey colour and a long shelf life so all you need to do is arrive home with a tub of mascarpone and some red ripe English strawberries and this luscious dessert for four people can be made in moments.

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  Serves 4

Ingredients
4 meringue nests (preferably Marks & Spencer)
7 oz (200 g) strawberries
1 x 250 g tub mascarpone
1 tablespoon golden caster sugar

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Equipment
There is no list of equipment specified for this recipe.

This recipe first appeared in You magazine.

Method

First of all pull the stalks off the strawberries and squash half of them into a Mini Chopper or a processor along with the golden caster sugar. Then whiz them to a purée and after that pour the purée into a sieve set over a bowl and press the purée through to extract the pips.

Now place the meringues on to serving plates, divide the mascarpone among them, piling it up in the centre. Next top with the rest of the strawberries, cut in half if they’re too big and pressing them into the mascarpone. Any left over can be arranged around the meringues on the plate.

Just before serving drizzle the purée all over and serve any extra in a jug. Later in the season this will be brilliant with raspberries or a mixture of raspberries, strawberries and redcurrants.

How To Cheat Hero Ingredient
Marks & Spencer Meringue Nests

How To Cheat Equipment Hero
Kenwood CH180 Mini Chopper Available from Woolworths, Argos, larger Boots stores, Sainsbury’s House of Fraser, Allders and Safeway Delia says, 'If you want to short-circuit lots of tedious chopping and knife sharpening, I’m really enthusiastic about this ingenious mini food processor. 1 tablespoon chopped parsley: 2 seconds, ¾ packet watercress: 4-5 seconds, a finely chopped onion… you name it – thousands of fast little processes that save you time.

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