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Strawberries: Juicy summer recipes
Make the most of the season's finest with our round-up of Delia's brightest berry recipes. Splurge immediately on a crisp, squashy, creamy pavlova or hoard some of the vibrant colour and juicy flavours away for the chilly winter months with a preserve – either way, you'll be sad when the season's over.
Eton Mess
This recipe, inspired by the strawberry-and-cream dessert traditionally served at Eton College on the 4th June, is great for nervous meringue makers – because the meringues are broken up it simply doesn't matter if they weep, crack or collapse. Don't forget, though, to make the meringues the day before you want to serve the pudding.
Strawberry and Balsamic Ice Cream with Sweet Strawberry and Mint Salsa
The addition of balsamic vinegar to dairy products such as cream and ice cream tempers the richness and adds a subtle flavour. Couple this with its affinity with strawberries and you have something in this ice cream that is both exquisite and unique.
Summer Fruit Millefeuille
You can use shop-bought puff pastry for this – it won't have such a good flavour as the quick flaky pastry below, which is made with butter – but the caramelising will help the flavour and it does cut down on the time.
Pavlova
This is a delicious pudding from Australia, which is very difficult to make if you don't have the right recipe but dead easy if you do! Served with sharp fruits to counteract the sweetness of the meringue, it is truly one of the greats. In the winter, sliced bananas and chopped preserved ginger, or slices of fresh mango with passion fruit are good.
Meringues with Summer Fruit
In the summer, soft fruit make the perfect filling for meringues, as their sharp acidity contrasts beautifully with the sweetness of the meringue.
Strawberry Granita
This is the recipe to make when there's a real glut of ripe strawberries. It's a much nicer way to conserve them than simply freezing them. The granita looks like sparkling jewels when you serve it in tall glasses – and it contains hardly any calories!
Fromage Frais Cheesecake with Strawberry Sauce
Whenever I see cheesecake on a menu I'm filled with longing – there's something awfully comforting about cheesecake – but the question always arises as to whether it will or will not be cloying (and if it is, what a waste of calories!). This version is definitely not cloying: it's light in texture and, made with fromage frais, a bit lighter on the calories, too.
Strawberry Cheesecake Ice Cream
My niece Hannah and nephew Tom are chief ice-cream tasters in our family and this one gets very high ratings indeed. It differs from most other ice creams in that it needs 2 hours in the main body of the fridge – at 41°F (5°C) – to become soft enough to scoop, so don't forget to allow time for that.
Home-made Strawberry Preserve
Strawberries are cheap and plentiful in the summer, so why not take advantage of this by storing away some of their sunny, ripe flavour to brighten bleak winter days to come? In a preserve, the whole fruit is suspended intact in its own jelly, so none of the lusciousness is lost.
Strawberries in Raspberry Purée
This is one of the simplest and most delicious sweet dishes I know and proves it's not always necessary to spend hours in the kitchen to make something spectacular.
A Terrine of Summer Fruits
This one is a stunner. It's important to have two tins because the terrine needs to be weighted while it is setting. In testing, I have found that it is necessary to add the smaller amount of jelly at the end to avoid spillage when weighting, as it's this weighting that makes the terrine easy to slice.
