Want to compete with Foreigners? It’s Noreen’s Meringue Cake with Raspberries.

It hurts me to write this post. I feel like I am putting another nail in my blogging coffin. You see, this post has me acting as “you’re in my way in the kitchen” photographer while the Wife prepares a recipe given to her by my revered mother-in-law. The real problem for me is that it is the dessert course of our multi-blog meal where we cooked along with Stefan on his and Kees trip to Tipperary. That is only a problem because my best efforts were knocked into a pretty degrading and distant third place.

I don’t do third place easily. So, without further truculence from me, here’s the list of ingredients:

• 4 egg whites
• 250 gms of caster sugar
• 1/2 a teaspoon of vanilla essence
• 1/2 a teaspoon of white vinegar
• 125 gms of finely chopped roast almonds
• 1 pinch of salt
• 2 punnets of fresh Irish raspberries
• 250 ml of fresh Irish cream

Whisk the eggs into stiff peaks, adding the vinegar, vanilla and salt at about half way through.

A quick shot of the ‘stiff peaks’ before being sent away by the Wife.

Next, slowly whip in the sugar until you have a nice shiny texture. You will have already roast the almonds for about 8 minutes at 170ºC, let them cool chopped them nice and fine. Next, fold them into the meringue mixture, being careful to not over stir.

Folding in the delicious almonds. You could use walnuts or hazelnuts just as easily.

Divide the mixture between two lined and oiled 8″ baking tins.

It’s hard for the photographer to not sample the mixture at this stage.

Smooth it out nicely without knocking too much air out of the mixture.

Threats from the Wife prevented me sampling.

Pop these in a 150ºC oven for 40 minutes. Take them out and turn them out onto a wire cooling rack.

The cakes collapse a little at this stage. This is not a bad thing.

Let the cakes cool. Whip the cream and add it to one of the sides of cake.

A pouring shot or two helps any post. This one is no exception.

Arrange (load on) the raspberries, reserving about half of them to make a nice coulis.

At this stage, she would not let me near it. Hence, shot from across the kitchen.

Add the remaining raspberries and a few grammes of sugar to a saucepan. Do this to taste.

Pouring shot number two. Adding the sugar to the raspberries.

Reduce this to a nice consistency. Strain through a sieve.

We could not resist another pouring shot. These have to be the very last raspberries of the season.

Place the top half on the cake.

Once the cake is together, it will be difficult to avoid cutting it.

Slice the cake and serve with the delicious coulis.

The last of the (pretty sloppy) pouring shots. A truly decadent cake.

This cake should be big enough to serve eight people. It was while we divided the second half out between us that we agreed it was a real triumph. The Wife and Stefan can fight it out for first place.

I am too full of cake to care about coming in a pathetic third place.