Bring one of these royal-inspired recipes out at a street party and you’ll be the talk of the town – better still, they both have an Essex twist!
Juliet Sear’s right royal traybake
Essex girl, ITV This Morning regular and cake-baker extraordinaire Juliet Sear has teamed up with British sugar brand Silver Spoon to create this showstopping bake. It will surprise your guests as the fluffy sponge is marbled red, white and blue! You can decorate it in so many different ways to suit the occasion. Keep it simple with a whipped cream and berries design, or flex your piping skills to create a Union Jack.
Sponge ingredients
300g softened unsalted butter
300g Silver Spoon caster sugar
6 medium free-range eggs
300g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
Food colouring in red and blue – strong gel colours work best, I’ve used Sugarflair red extra, navy and baby blue
TIP If you want your sponge and frosting to look very white as opposed to cream, use Trex or similar white vegetable fat instead of the butter, or half and half. You may need to add a little more salt and vanilla to taste.
Topping ingredients
250g unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
500g Silver Spoon icing sugar
2 tsp vanilla bean paste or extract
Method
Preheat the oven to 170c fan
Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla until very light, pale and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time until all incorporated.
Dry whisk the baking powder through the flour and fold into the wet mix on slow in increments of three, making sure it’s gently mixed through.
Divide the mix into 3 and colour 1/3 blue and 1/3 red, adding colouring until you have the desired shade.
Add the mixture to the tin using a couple of dessert spoons, making lots of alternate blobs of colour. Then, drag a knife through the batter to swirl and marble the colours.
Bake for about 30-35 minutes until going golden and risen and a cake tester or skewer comes out clean from the middle of the sponge. Leave to cool in the tin for five minutes, then turn out onto a rack to cool completely.
You’ll need to tint some of the icing for the flag design – keep approximately 350g of it white and colour 300g bright red and 100g blue. Load the red into a piping bag with a large 1cm round nozzle, add 175g white into a bag with a slightly smaller round nozzle (7mm) and then the blue into a piping bag with a smaller nozzle (5mm). Use the remaining white to spread a thin layer over the sponge before piping on the flag design.
Maldon Salt’s Eton Mess
How delicious does Maldon Salt’s twist on a classic Eton Mess look? This traditional British dessert is supposed to have originated in 1893 from Eton College as a dessert they served in cricket matches to opposing Harrow School. It is believed to have been an accident after a pavlova was crushed. It consists of meringue, cream, and strawberry sauce; Maldon Salt’s recipe has an added pinch of salt and is garnished with edible flowers and little meringue kisses.
Ingredients
175g egg whites
350g caster sugar
1 tbsp lemon juice
Pink food colouring (optional)
200g strawberries, sliced into halves or quarters
250g strawberry coulis or jam
600ml double cream
50g icing sugar
Pinch of Maldon salt
1 tbsp vanilla bean paste
Edible gold leaf (optional)
Edible flowers (optional)
Method
Preheat the oven to 100C.
Begin by making the meringues. Add the egg whites to the bowl of a stand mixer and turn the whisk attachment on to high. Whip the egg whites until they form medium peaks and then turn the speed down to medium. Slowly add the caster sugar, a teaspoon at a time, allowing each addition to be properly incorporated before adding the next. You want the sugar to dissolve after each addition and the best way to check is to rub a little of the meringue between your thumb and forefinger – the mixture should feel smooth and not grainy. If it is still grainy, then continue to whisk until smooth and all the sugar has been added.
The meringue should now be stiff, voluminous, and glossy. Add the tablespoon of lemon juice and whisk again to incorporate. The lemon juice helps to stabilise the meringue.
Line two large baking sheets with baking paper and use a little of the meringue mixture on the corner of the baking paper to stick it to the sheet. With our recipe, we have chosen to bake some large meringues to crumble throughout the Eton Mess but also some smaller meringue kisses to decorate the top – but this is optional. The pink and white meringue kisses are achieved using a piping bag with a small nozzle attached, then painting some pink gel food colouring up the inside of the piping bag with a food safe brush. Then simply spoon some meringue mixture into the piping bag and pipe small kisses onto the baking tray. These small kisses take roughly 45 minutes to bake.
With the larger meringue you can simply spoon these straight onto the baking tray. We left some of ours white. Then with the remaining meringue mixture we marbled some pink through by folding some pink food colouring through, stopping before it was fully mixed. Then we spooned this onto the baking tray in the same way. These larger meringues take approximately 1 hour to bake. The best way to tell if the meringue is baked is if they lift very easily off the baking paper.
Once all the meringues are baked, remove from the oven, and allow to cool.
Once the meringues are cooled you can assemble the Eton Mess. Lightly crush the large meringues and leave the kisses to garnish.
Pour the double cream into a clean bowl and add the icing sugar. Use an electric whisk to beat this to soft peaks. You can whisk this by hand, it just takes longer and a little more elbow grease! Finally add the vanilla bean paste and the Maldon salt and fold through. The Maldon salt is delicious here as it helps cut through the sweetness of the dessert and enhances the flavours of the strawberries and vanilla.
To a large trifle dish, you just want to start layering up – there is no correct way to do this. Simply alternate between layering the softly whipped cream, strawberries, crushed meringues pieces and strawberry coulis. Finish the top of the layers with some peaks of the whipped cream.
Finally, garnish with some of the meringue kisses (we decorated ours with little flecks of gold leaf), strawberry halves and edible flowers. Serve immediately.
