Eton Mess

These gorgeous little desserts couldn't be any easier! They would actually make a great Christmas dessert-- they look festive and are light (despite the cream) I was first introduced to the Eton Mess when we traveled to Ireland last summer with our extended family. Ireland has never been associated with good cuisine, but we had the best food of any of our travels there. I became obsessed with having the Eton Mess anywhere and everywhere I could. Meringue desserts seemed to be popular generally speaking. You can do this dessert with ice cream as well in which case it's called a Knickerbocker Glory.

I will give rough proportions because you can adjust it easily enough based on how many you want to make. I had a lot of raspberry sauce in the freezer that I had made last summer so it was especially easy to assemble this dessert. If you don't feel like making your own raspberry sauce, you can buy the raspberries in sugar syrup (in the freezer section right by the strawberries in syrup) and puree that in the blender.

red sugar for lining the glass
vanilla meringue cookies (I used Trader Joe's- approximately half the package for 12 mini dessert martini glasses)
freshly whipped heavy cream, lightly sweetened (I used 1 pint with 1 T sugar)

Moisten the edges of your little martini glasses with a lime and dip into the red sugar to line the edges.
Break the cookies into smaller pieces with your hand and mix the cookies into the whipped cream. You don't have to overload it with cookies. Spoon the cookie/cream mixture into your dessert glasses and drizzle with raspberry sauce.  You can do this several hours before you are planning to serve them- but not the night before or the cookies will soften too much.
Another way you can do this is in a trifle format: scoop a layer of whip cream, add a layer of cookies and a drizzle of raspberry sauce- repeat the layers until you've filled the glass.

Raspberry Sauce:
2 cups fresh or frozen raspberries
2/3 cup sugar
1/4 c water
1 T lemon juice
Puree in the blender and force through a sieve. Any leftover sauce can be frozen and used later as ice cream topping, cheesecake topping, drizzled over chocolate cake etc.... the possibilities are endless.