Chocolate and Orange Meringues

The time between Christmas and the resumption of normal eating (otherwise known as the diet, in my case!) often calls for ingenuity in using up things leftover from catering for visitors, or just making more than usual to give people choice.

I was pleased with myself this year for making a Gooseherder's Pie with shredded goose meat and a mashed potato topping, as well as some really tasty vegetable patties using all the leftover root vegetables which accumulated over the festive period.

This dessert was another successful use of bits and pieces lurking in the fridge - leftover egg whites and crème fraiche from the Christmas Day dessert, excess cream cheese from  making a smoked mackerel pate and a couple of oranges reaching the end of their life. All I needed to add was a 300g tub of mascarpone cheese.

I made the meringues with 4 egg whites, 200g of caster sugar and two teaspoons of sifted cocoa. I spread the meringue into 6 nest shapes about 10cm across and baked at 150C for about 90 minutes, then left them to cool in the oven.

The cheesecake-style filling was made from a tub of mascarpone cheese, about 100g full fat cream cheese and a few tablespoons of crème fraiche mixed with 50g icing sugar, the zest of 2 oranges and the juice from one of them. This set quite firmly when chilled, and was enough to fill 4 meringues.

The chocolate sauce was made by melting 100g of plain chocolate into 150mls double cream and leaving to cool a bit.

The dessert was assembled just before serving, to avoid the meringue getting soggy.

The second photo is awful - my apologies - bad light and rushing to get a photo while everyone was waiting to start eating!