This quick & easy Eton Mess with ready made meringue is the perfect light, summer dessert to make when you are pressed for time, but don’t want to compromise on flavour. And I don’t just cheat by using ready made meringue, I use shop-bought strawberry sauce too!
I serve this Quick Eton Mess often in the summer when we have guests, it’s a real easy crowd-pleaser. When I make it for more people than just us four, I double the recipe, which is straightforward to do, you just need an extra large mixing bowl to combine it all together.
What is Eton Mess?
It’s thought that Eton Mess originated at Eton College during the 19th century. It’s traditionally made with whipped cream, meringue and strawberries, with other berries being used sometimes too. At Eton College sometimes they used to serve it with banana and no berries at all.
The Stars of my Quick Eton Mess
The Berries
Some Eton Mess recipes will only use strawberries but we love it with some raspberries in there too. You’ll need to use fresh berries, frozen strawberries and raspberries will let out too much liquid and you’ll quickly end up with a very sloppy pudding. When you come to chop the strawberries you can quarter small ones and chop larger ones into eighths.
The Cream
Use whipping cream and whisk on a high setting until stiff peaks form.
The Strawberry Sauce
I use Askey’s Treat syrup always for this, but any store-bought strawberry sauce or syrup will work!
The Meringue
One of the tricks to keeping this Eton Mess quick and easy to whip up, is to use ready made meringue. You can either use a pack of meringue nests or 112g / 3.95oz of meringue shells or cookies (US).
Prep Ahead
You can chop the strawberries up in advance and if you have guests you might want to do that, but really that’s all you need to do. This dessert needs to be prepared just before serving and will take you just 15 minutes to do so.
Kids Bake Too
If you have little ones, they can help you make this Quick Eton Mess. They will LOVE to crumble up those meringues!
Feed a Crowd
As I said above, this recipe is very easily doubled to feed 8 people, so long as you have an extra-large mixing bowl!
Storing My Quick Eton Mess
This dessert is best eaten immediately. It is fine to eat the leftovers for the next 2 days, BUT it will go very sloppy and so I don’t recommend it. If you have leftovers instead I recommend you put them into a smaller bowl, cover with clingfilm and then foil and freeze! Alternatively store it in an air-tight food container. It will make a lovely frozen dessert. Depending how much you freeze, you’ll need to take it out 10-25 minutes before ready to eat to soften a little.
For more on safe food storage and reheating read here >
Diet Details
My Quick Eton Mess is nut and gluten-free, so long as the pack of meringues says so.
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Quick Eton Mess
Equipment
- Chopping board
- Large metal spoon
Ingredients
- 1 x 8 pack meringue nests or 112g / 3.95oz meringue shells (or cookies US)
- 300 ml whipping cream
- 150 g raspberries
- 400 g strawberries chopped
- 2 tablespoons strawberry sauce / syrup
- Mint sprigs to decorate optional
Instructions
- In a large bowl, beat the whipping cream on high until it forms thick soft peaks.
- Add in the meringue nests, breaking them up into pieces as you go. Using a large metal spoon fold the mixture until just combined.
- Fold the berries and strawberry syrup through the cream and meringue gently until it’s running through nicely, NOT completely combined, so there are some patches of cream and meringue with no berry mix (if you want to decorate the Eton Mess you can reserve some strawberries and raspberries first.) Transfer to a individual dessert bowls or one large serving dish. You can decorate with the reserved berries and mint sprigs if you like. Serve immediately*.
Notes
Allen says
Lovely for dairy lovers