Chocolate meringue pyramid recipe

Turn your chocolate into an extravagant dessert with this recipe for chocolate meringue pyramid. Homemade meringues are hard to do but they're well worth the effort. The crispy pyramid is topped with fresh berries, single cream - and chunks of naughty chocolate! Piping the meringue before it’s cooked will give it a ridged effect.

Ingredients

• 4 egg whites (medium eggs)
• 225g caster sugar
• 250ml whipping cream
• 1tsp vanilla essence
• 125g fresh raspberries
• 125g chocolate, broken into pieces (This recipe uses Cadbury Dairy Milk Marvellous Creations Cookie Nut Crunch)
• 25g toasted chopped hazelnuts

Method

1. Preheat oven to 120°C/200°F/Gas Mark ½ . Grease 3 baking sheets and line with baking parchment.
2. Whisk the egg whites until very stiff in a grease free bowl, add the sugar 1tbsp at a time and continue whisking until the mixture is shiny and stiff.
3. Using a piping bag with a 1cm star piping nozzle, pipe 1/3 of the mixture into stars 1cm across, 1/3 into stars 2.5cm and 1/3 into 3.5 cm stars. There should be about 16 of each size. Bake for 2 hours then remove the smallest meringues and cool .Turn the others over and cook for a further 30 okminutes until dried out. Cool
4. Whip the cream with the vanilla until stiff. Arrange some of the larger meringues on a plate to form a 20cm circle, sticking together with cream. Arrange the remaining meringues in progressively smaller circles to form a pyramid shape, sticking together with the cream.
5. Decorate with fresh raspberries and chunks of chocolate. Sprinkle the hazelnuts over the top. This is best eaten on the same day.