eton mess cake

eton mess cake

• 22 Jul 2024

It's the middle of winter here in Sydney and the only saving grace, fruitwise, are the berries. I loaded up my trolley with berries at the fruit shop, and brought them home with me. But what to make?

I had any number of berry and cream laden cake recipes that I could have chosen but I decided to make an Eton Mess Cake. This cake is a play on Eton Mess, a classic English dessert made from broken meringues, whipped cream and berries. In a case of happenstance, I had a plastic container filled with mini meringues that I wanted to use up and I couldn't think of a better way to use them.

You can make the cake 1-2 days in advance but please don't decorate the cake ahead of time. If you do, the meringues will soften and dissolve and you'll lose the contrast between the soft billowy cream and the crunchy meringue.

Here’s the recipe for you, which makes a 17cm square cake that I adapted from here. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

Eton Mess Cake - makes a 17cm square cake, which serves 6-8 people
Ingredients

125g caster sugar, plus extra for sprinkling

1 tsp lemon rind

125g room temperature unsalted butter, plus extra for the tin
1 tsp vanilla extract

2 eggs
100g self-raising flour, sifted with a pinch of salt
50g almond meal
50ml full cream milk
45mls cream
50g strawberries, hulled and diced into 1 cm pieces
50g raspberries, fresh or frozen
1-2 tsp caster sugar, extra

Topping
250ml thickened cream
75g strawberries, halved
50g fresh raspberries
3-4 baby meringues, roughly broken up
Baby mint leaves

Method
Heat the oven to 190°C, conventional. Grease and line a 17cm square tin with baking paper (leave some overhanging to help lift the cake out once done).

Place the sugar into the bowl of a stand mixer and using your finger tips, massage the lemon rind with the sugar. Add the room temperature butter and the vanilla to the bowl and beat together until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Crack in the eggs, one by one, and mix between each addition until combined. Mix in the flour followed by the ground almonds and gently stir in the milk and the cream. Using a spatula, gently fold in the strawberries and raspberries.

Pour the batter into the prepared tin, spread out evenly and sprinkle with a little extra sugar. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a skewer poked into the middle comes out clean. Once cooked, remove from the oven to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then lift from the tin onto a wire rack to cool completely. When cooled, place the cake on a serving plate.

Topping

Using a hand mixer, whip the cream until it forms soft peaks. Just before serving, roughly spread the cream over the cake then scatter with the strawberries, raspberries, broken meringue pieces and a few mint leaves. If you make this ahead the meringues will soften and dissolve and you'll lose the contrast between the soft billowy cream and the crunchy meringue.

Well this went down a treat at work - the combination of whipped cream, fresh berries and a hint of mint was declared a winner.

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now, 

Jillian