Sacramento Digs Gardening Article
Your resource for Sacramento-area gardening news, tips and events

Articles Recipe Index Keyword Index Calendar Twitter Facebook Instagram About Us Contact Us

A delicious mess worthy of an angel

Recipe: Strawberries star in no-fuss dessert

Sacramento Digs Gardening
BY Kathy Morrison PUBLISHED APR 4, 2021

Two clear glass filled with cream and strawberries

A strawberry fan tops off the strawberry-cream-cake dessert. (Photos:

Kathy Morrison)

The British dessert known as Eton mess has been on my dessert bucket list for awhile. It's named for Eton College, where the sweet creation is served after the traditional Eton-Harrow cricket match. Fresh strawberries are the stars, diced and allowed to macerate in a little sugar. They're swirled into a concoction of fresh whipped cream and broken pieces of crunchy meringue. Sounds like spring, right?

(The origin of the dessert isn't clear, but it seems likely that a dessert accident -- maybe dropped? crushed? sat on? -- was a contributing factor. The dessert called pavlova, after the celebrated Russian ballerina, also has meringue, cream and fruit, and may have been the starting point.)

The angel food cake slices were cut into chunks. After trying

varied sizes, I decided smaller was better: more crunch.

Well, I didn't feel like making my own meringues -- I had gardening to do! -- and I couldn't find any meringue cookies in my COVID-limited sphere. So I went with the next best thing: toasted pieces of an angel food cake I'd found in the supermarket bakery department. That'd be crunchy, sweet and airy, right? So I had to rename the dessert.

I also picked up a few tips along the way about the ingredients, which can come across as too sweet without something to cut through the sugar. Lemon zest and just a bit of mascarpone cheese (or sour cream, crème fraîche or plain yogurt) do just that.

Raspberries or blackberries also would be delicious in this, though you'd have to crush them a bit to get some juice going. (Lime zest instead of lemon works best for these berries.) This recipe will serve 4 easily -- 6 after a big dinner, since it's surprisingly rich.

Don't mix the prepared ingredients together until just before serving or the toasted cake will get soft. Then you'd have something approaching trifle, which is another spring dessert altogether!

Strawberry Angel's Mess

Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

About 1/3 of an angel food cake, sliced and cut into 1-inch or smaller pieces

2 cups hulled and diced fresh strawberries

1-3/4 tablespoons granulated sugar, plus 1/4 cup, divided

1/2 teaspoon fresh lemon zest

1 cup heavy whipping cream

1/4 cup mascarpone cheese, or crème fraîche, sour cream or plain Greek yogurt

4 to 6 strawberries, cut into fans, for garnish, one per serving

Three bowls of berries, whipped cream and toasted cake chunks

The ingredients are all prepped and ready to combine. I decided

later that more strawberries than I have here would be better,

so the recipe reflects that.

Instructions:

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Spread the cake pieces on a parchment-paper-covered baking sheet, and bake for 8 to 10 minutes, until the pieces are crunchy on the outside but still soft in the middle. Remove from oven and let cool.

Meanwhile, stir the 1-3/4 tablespoons sugar and the lemon zest into the diced strawberries in a bowl, and set aside for at least 5 minutes to macerate.

In a medium bowl, whip together the cream, 1/4 cup sugar and the mascarpone or alternate you've chosen, until soft peaks form, about 2 minutes.

If desired, prepare the dessert ahead to this point and keep everything separate until ready to serve.

When it's time for dessert, set out the individual glasses or bowls. Fold the macerated strawberries into the whipped cream mixture and then fold in the cake pieces. Fill the dishes, top each with a strawberry fan, and serve.

Comments

0 comments have been posted.

RECIPE

A recipe for preparing delicious meals from the bounty of the garden.

Keywords:

recipes Sacramento recipe spring dessert fruit strawberries gardening produce backyard produce spring farm to fork dessert

Newsletter Subscription

Sacramento Digs Gardening to your inbox.

Flowers in My Back Yard Series

July 14: How to keep hydrangeas happy

July 7: Grow these bright cosmos for bees and butterflies

June 30: Agapanthus adds blue fireworks to the garden

June 23: Easy-care gazanias fill those hot corners

June 16: Daylilies are perfect for water-wise gardens (and a lot more)

June 9: Grow coneflowers for pollinators -- and yourself

June 2: Sunflowers capture Sacramento's summer attitude

May 29: Are your roses going 'blind'?

May 26: Zinnias are the summer flowers every garden needs

May 19: Plant dahlias now for late-summer flower power

May 12: Know your coreopsis from your bidens

May 5: Mums the word on Mother's Day weekend

April 28: Majestic Matilija poppy is worth a look

April 21: Celebrate roses, America's favorite flower

April 14: Small flowers with outsized impact

April 7: Calendulas do double duty

April 3: Make Easter lilies last for years to come

March 31: In praise of a pollinator magnet (small-leaf salvias)

March 24: Azaleas brighten shady spots

March 17: The perfect flower for beginners? Try zonal geraniums

March 10: Keep camellias happy for years to come

March 3: Fruit tree blossoms are a fleeting joy

Feb. 27: Are your roses looking rusty?

Feb. 24: Treasure spring daffodils now and for years to come

Feb. 17: How and why to grow wildflowers

Feb. 10: Let's talk Valentine's Day roses

Feb. 3: Why grow flowers?

Local News

Taste Summer! E-cookbook

Find our summer recipes here!

Sites We Like

Garden checklist for week of July 12

Get out early in the morning to take care of garden chores. Temperatures are expected to stay below 80 degrees before 10 a.m.

* Remember to water early and deep; your garden depends on you.

* It’s not too late to add a splash of color. Plant petunias, snapdragons, zinnias and marigolds.

* From seed, plant corn, pumpkins, radishes, winter squash and sunflowers.

* Keep your vegetable garden watered, mulched and weeded. Water before 8 a.m. to reduce the chance of fungal infection and to conserve moisture.

* Water before fertilizing vegetables and blooming annuals, perennials and shrubs to give them a boost. Feeding flowering plants every other week will extend their bloom.

* Feed vegetable plants bone meal or other fertilizers high in phosphate to stimulate more blooms and fruiting.

* Don’t let tomatoes wilt or dry out completely. Give tomatoes a deep watering two to three times a week. Harvest vegetables promptly to encourage plants to produce more. Squash especially tends to grow rapidly in hot weather. Keep an eye on zucchini.

* If your melons and squash aren’t setting fruit, give the bees a hand. With a small, soft paintbrush, gather some pollen from male flowers, then brush it inside the female flowers, which have a tiny swelling at the base of their petals. (That's the embryo melon or squash.) Within days, that little swelling should start growing.

* Pinch back chrysanthemums for bushy plants and more flowers in September.

* Remove spent flowers from roses, daylilies and other bloomers as they finish flowering.

* Pinch off blooms from basil so the plant will grow more leaves.

* Cut back lavender after flowering to promote a second bloom.

Send us a gardening question, a post suggestion or information about an upcoming event. sacdigsgardening@gmail.com

Taste Spring! E-cookbook