Pomegranate/Strawberry Eton Mess

This recipe uses bottled fresh pomegranate juice to encourage the strawberries to ooze out their fragrant summery juices. If you're making this with out-of-season strawberries, then you stand a chance of using freshly squeezed pomegranate juice, in which case, sprinkle some seeds on top of this voluptuous mound of meringue and berryspiked cream.

Ingredients

• 4 cups strawberries
  
• 2 teaspoons superfine sugar (or vanilla sugar)
• 2 teaspoons pomegranate juice
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 4 small meringue cookies (from a packet)

Method

1. Hull and chop the strawberries and put into a bowl. Add the sugar and pomegranate juice and leave to macerate while you whip the cream.
2. Whip the cream in a large bowl until thick but still soft.
3. Roughly crumble in 4 meringues nests - you will need chunks for texture, as well as a little fine dust.
4. Take out a ladleful, or about 100g / ½ cup, of the chopped strawberries, and fold the meringued cream and rest of the fruit mixture together.
5. Arrange on four serving plates or glasses, or in a mound, and top each one with some of the remaining macerated strawberries.

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