Saturday 3 January 2009

Cherry Meringue pies


After levelling the bases of my Christmas snowmen sponges I had some tasty looking offcuts!


We’re all being (rightly) encouraged to waste less food so I pondered how to use the leftover sponge. Raiding my store cupboard I found some tinned cherries, and, after making my custard tarts I had lots of leftover egg whites. At this point a lightbulb switched on in my brain and cherry meringue tarts were born!

I layered the cherries onto the sponge. Tinned cherries are lovely - a real success story; so often we think of tinned fruit as inferior to fresh, but I think these cherries are proof that it's not always true:


A layer of meringue and – voila!


They are beautiful and certainly don’t look like a creation borne of leftovers:



I was on a roll at this point; the creative juices were certainly flowing (it doesn’t happen very often so I enjoy it when it does!). I didn’t use all of the tinned cherries. Again, not wanting to waste them, I pureed them and served them with the pies as a fruit coulis:


Using up offcuts from other recipes never tasted so good:


This is the last of my Christmas posts – business as usual resumes next week!

Ingredients:
8 discs of Genoese sponge – for the recipe click here
2 tins of cherries
6 egg whites
375g caster sugar
½ teaspoon cornflour

How to make:

- Preheat the oven to 220°C/fan oven 200°C/425°F/Gas mark 7.
- On a baking sheet, lay out the cooked sponge discs.
- Place some cherries on top of each sponge. Don’t go right to the edge because you want the meringue to sit on the sponge.
- Put the egg whites and sugar in a bowl and whisk until the mixture turns thick and glossy. This will take quite a long time – mine took over 10 minutes.
- Whisk in the cornflour.
- Either pipe or simply spread the meringue over the cherries and sponge.
- Bake for 5-10 minutes or until the meringue is just starting to brown. Check after 5 minutes as the meringue can burn very quickly.
- Leave to cool on a wire rack before serving.
- Bask in glory at the wonderful thing you have made.
- Eat.

12 comments:

April said...

they sound delicious

April xx

Rhiannon said...

those look amazing and incredibly scrummy :)
x

Cakelaw said...

These look scrumptious! What a great idea.

PG said...

oooh YA! you really need to be proud of you. What a lovely recipe! I love meringue on cakes.Looks delicious! I think I am going to bookmark this one. I have to wait a while till I empty my fridge and cupboards with all the baking I had been doing for Christmas! :D But, I have to try these. these look fantastic!

glamah16 said...

Thats the most beautiful use of leftovers I have seen.

J.L. Danger said...

you're brilliant!

Maggie said...

Tinned and bottled cherries are a good storecupboard ingredient and I for one luv 'em.
What a splendid way to use your leftovers. They truly look wonderful.

Jerri at Simply Sweet Home said...

How wonderful! Great idea.

Dee said...

Yay, for tinned fruit! Fresh cherries require the black market sale of organs in my country, so it's tinned or nothing.

Love the meringue on top, and they certainly don't look like anything made with leftovers :)

Happy new year, my masked friend.

Maria@TheGourmetChallenge said...

That meringue topping looks so lovely and fluffy. And the nice cherries sitting beneath it make it an awesome treat!

Y said...

Yummy! The best ideas come from leftovers, in my opinion :)

Premyscakes said...

They look heavenly and delicious.