Meringue Island on Berry Compote

On the spur of the moment, after watching Chef Ramsay create a floating meringue island in a strawberry champagne soup decided to put those leftover egg whites (from the Wellington), to good use. 

I grabbed some mixed berries and cooked them down on the stove top with some diet 7Up, freshly squeezed lemon juice, and a dash of white wine.  While that was cooking, I whipped up the egg whites and then, folded in some powdered sugar. Once the fruit was cooked down, I put it into some small ramekin dishes, topped it with the meringue and put in the oven. The oven was a low temp and they were sitting in a water filled pan in the oven.

Now, we have some lovely lemon drop ice cream from Publix so I grabbed a bit of that and used it to de-glaze my berry pot and stuck it back in the freezer to re-freeze.

Once the meringue came out of the oven, I lifted it off the berries, poured them over the now lemon-berry ice cream and added the beautifully browned meringue island in the center.  So easy, used what I had on hand, and came out lovely.

Reflections:  I should have used a lot more berries in the compote when I started.  Then, I could have just served that instead of having to fool with the ice cream bit but I underestimated how much they would cook down.  The meringue was so easy to make that I wonder why I haven't tried it before.  Now, I really want to attempt a lemon meringue pie!