Flying visit to say this week’s food was based on these two recipes: blueberry cream filled meringues and pink grapefruit jellies.

Some thoughts: meringues. I need more practice. I can get them to soft peak stage no problem, but don’t think I’ve ever actually got to stiff peaks. The problem used to be not reading recipes and tipping the sugar into the egg whites from the start, rather than whipping them and then gradually adding sugar. But even doing that, and beating the life out of them, I can’t get them to firm peaks.

I “lurided up” the meringues with green food colouring rather than the pink in the recipe (to go with raspberries) or blue (to go with blueberries) because I went shopping late in the day and the co-op only had red or green.

We have a blueberry bush in a pot in the garden, and this recipe used up what will likely be the last of the crop this year. Our friends have not had any blueberries off their’s as they got chickens this year, and watching the chickens climb into the pot and flap around to steal blueberries off the bush proved so hilarious they’d rather do that than get enough chicken wire to safeguard the harvest.

This recipe is a fantastically effective way of using the limited amount of blueberries you get off one bush – less than three ounces, probably 10 blueberries per person, whizzed up to a purée was definitely enough to get a good taste of blueberries in meringues for all four-point-five of us eating tonight.

The pink grapefruit jellies – slightly less successful. They didn’t set properly. I made a pint of grapefruit juice into jelly with a one-pint sachet, chilled for two days, but it was nearly liquid when served. Did the gelatine not stir in properly? Does it actually matter that the ground cow-hoof is actually, ahem ahem, a number of years beyond its BBE?

The vanilla cream really made it – even if made with cheapskate flavouring rather than real pods or essence. One 300ml pot of whipping cream, whipped, did the blueberry cream fillings for four pairs of meringues, and splodges of vanilla flavoured cream for the jelly.

The pudding club posts can now all be found on the pudding club tag.