Bright and Beautiful

and what to do with broken meringue

I wanted to write about my sister’s dog Pippa today. The way she walked into the woods on Saturday night and laid down on the soft moss between the evergreens along the Saint Mary’s River. They way we had all gathered there that weekend to celebrate Easter, and how our brother in law found her that night, her abdomen engorged, her eyes shining in his flashlight. The way she had been so well a few hours before, walking into the village and back, barking at the door, chasing squirrels beneath the bird feeders. The way my sister and her husband discovered at the all-night veterinary clinic, three hours later, that her spleen was full of cancer, and must have been for quite some time. But I didn’t know how to begin.

So instead I turned on the oven. It was my youngest son’s teacher appreciation lunch the following day and I needed to turn this melancholy into celebration. This is his last year at this school, a school that he loved, a school that loved him back, a school that deserved something bright and beautiful. Visions of Ottolenghi’s window displays came to mind, where tiers of cake stands are filled with pops of colourful food and pillowy meringues dripping in raspberry coulis. So I googled ‘Ottolenghi meringues dripping in raspberry coulis’, found a random recipe and got to work. I whipped egg whites with sugar, spoonful by spoonful. I blended raspberries with a pinch of sugar and lemon juice. I scooped baseball-sized mounds of whites onto parchment. I topped them with spoonfuls of raspberry coulis, and swirled the bright juice through the meringue with chopsticks, as instructed, then slid the trays into a barely warm oven. Four hours later I turned the oven off and left them in the oven to dry. I would wake up to swirls of beauty.

I’ve made many meringues in my past, mostly in pavlova form. I follow a recipe with a strict ratio of whites to sugar and a touch of cream of tartar to stabilize the tiny bubbles in the egg whites making for billowy, glossy meringues. This time I went rogue, going for a look, not a method, and when I opened the oven door the next morning, I knew something wasn’t right. As it turns out, meringues can cry too. 

In the food world it’s called weeping. This is when sugar seeps from the whites, creating beads of moisture on the meringue, or in my case, a pool of melted sugar beneath the meringue. There are several explanations for this:

1. Sugar has to completely dissolve when beating the whites. If not, undissolved sugar can seep away from the whites during the baking process.  

2. The oven might be too cool, or too hot.

3. Weather. When I made the meringues, hail was pelting down outside, collecting in the clusters of crocuses in the grass. But the kitchen was cozy, I was flushed and the oven was dry. 

Who knows if I didn’t beat the whites and sugar enough. Who knows why I chose a recipe without cream of tartar added to help things along. Who knows why the recipe called for a very low oven. Who knows why I chose beauty over science. Who knows why women flush. All I know is that when I peeled a meringue from the parchment, it pulled away trailing sticky tentacles behind it. I had made meringue jellyfish, swirled with raspberries. 

So I sat down to write instead. I thought about how the boys dug a grave for Pippa along the river. How my dad, with a wool ski hat on his head and tears in his eyes, opened with -

All things bright and beautiful,

All creatures great and small,

All things wise and wonderful,

The Lord God made them all

How we gathered around the grave and read lyrics from Dog Song 2, written by The Be Good Tanyas¹ -

your friend is gone, but you live on

in life you loved her fully

but now little streams and forests

dream

and all is made more holy

And how smoke twisted into the sky from our bonfire, how our eyes burned and the wind howled, and then we went inside.

---

When meringues are still edible but not quite what you had hoped for, turn them into Eton Mess. Eton Mess is a dessert named after Eton College, where it was first served at a cricket match in 1893. I imagine a cook in the back kitchen making a batch of failed meringues and solving the problem by smashing them with a cricket bat and folding the sweet shards through mounds of cream and berries instead. I basically did the same, only this time I used a knife, frozen raspberries and served the results in the trifle dish (formerly filled with washing powder) from my last newsletter. There’s always a way through.

---

Eton Mess

Combine 2 cups (500ml) whipping (double) cream in a mixing bowl with 1/4 cup sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla. Whip until cream is soft and pillowy, but still a little floppy.

In a blender, combine 1 cup of fresh or thawed from frozen raspberries (leave a few for garnish), a pinch of sugar and the juice of half a lemon. Blend until almost smooth.

Break 4 meringue nests (store bought or homemade will work - my meringues had raspberry coulis swirled through them - a nice touch, despite the weeping meringue) and fold the pieces into the whipped cream. Spoon the mixture into a glass serving dish. Swirl the raspberry mixture through the cream - making sure not to mix it thoroughly - and garnish with the remaining raspberries. Eton Mess will keep in the fridge for up to an hour - any longer will soften the meringue. Not tragic, but best eaten right away.

1. The full version of this song by the Be Good Tanyas was featured in an episode of The Food Podcast featuring Maggie MacKellar of

The Sit Spot

. It remains one of my favourites. You can have a listen here.