Nearly didn't make them, glad I did

So this week's #ShortandTweet challenge focussed on meringues and I claim to not like meringues so this challenge nearly didn't happen.

On Sauturday morning I was checking back through the challenge options and grumpily announced to my husband 'it's meringues' expecting him to look bored, but a hopeful smile ran across his face and after checking he had actually heard what I had said I realised he would quite like some meringues, thank you. So meringue prejuduces aside I went into the kitchen.

Well, they were very easy and very delicious, delicate crisp outer shell and soft mallowy centre, what more can I say.

No piping, no overnight low ovens, just whisk, fold, dollop and bake. Another trouble free winner from Dan Leppard's very impressive book Short and Sweet.

There was also an option to make the easy lemon curd with the egg yolks you would have left from the meringues but I wanted to avoid the buttery richness of lemon curd so I made a citrus sabayon sauce instead. I had a nice batch of blood oranges in the house and orange liqueur a plenty from Christmas so with these beauties and the 3 egg yolks a sauce was quickly made. We had this in the evening as a sort of sundae with the meringues and some fresh fruit, delicious.

I have had a low fat and citrus theme to the week as we needed a birthday treat for a colleague who has to keep their fat intake very low so the answer to that was a pair of fruit salads and some apricot and ginger bisocotti.

The first fruit salad was segmented oranges and  mango in a star anise syrup and the other dried apricots in a cinnamon syrup. The biscotti recipe was from the epicurious web site and the only fat it contains is from the egg yolk so really quite low. I hate it when recipes are referred to as fat free or perhaps more commonly sugar free when what they really mean is no added butter, oil, sugar ingredients etc. It is just misleading to call a recipe sugar free if it is full of dried fruit for example. The recipe for the biscotti   is in american measurements so you will need cups or a conversion chart. I upped the amount of candied ginger as I am a ginger fan. The dough was pretty sticky to handle when trying to shape the log for baking but after that it was no trouble at all.

Here is the baked log being cut into diagonal slices before the second bake. You need to slice when the dough is still warm but not straight from the oven. I also find a serrated knife better than a standard chefs knife to get a clean cut.

The slices are baked for a further ten minues on each side and then cooled.

I could not resist dipping some of them in dark chocolate but they really don't need it, I just cannot help myself.

The final citrus treat of the week was to make marmelade, a small batch of traditional seville orange marmelade and an even smaller batch of bergamot marmalade. A good bergamot is pretty hard to find but my source for the last two years has been the Natoora online shop they sell a really wide range of excellent products so I have a bit of a splurge when it is bergamot season.

Here are the bergamot fruits :

And here is the marmelade:



I kept back some of the bergamot pips/seeds and popped them in compost this morning so who nows in ten years or so I may be harvesting my own fruits.

Hope you have all had a great weekend too!