Marmalade meringue tarts

I first learned about making marmalade and preserves from the fabulous Vivien Lloyd. Her teaching inspired me to make my own preserves as it didn’t look as complicated as I thought. A few successes and I was obsessed!

There are times when it doesn’t go to plan though and you end up with unset marmalade. Well at least over-wobble is better than an under-wobble. With under-wobble or no-wobble you have no choice but to get a little hammer and bash the stuff into pieces to suck as sweets. With under-wobble you at least get a few more options! Our favourites are as follows:

- Swirl into vanilla ice cream and enjoy with a nice treacle sponge.

- Add a few fresh or tinned orange segments and bottle as an accompaniment to porridge

- Dollop onto a brownie mixture for a little orangey gooey-ness

- Spoon over a simple vanilla cheesecake as a hot sauce

I also think they are perfect as a curd substitute in a jam tarty, meringuey combo!

As it’s rather Spring like at the moment I decided on a floral cutter to make little daisy shaped pastry cases.

Once these were baked, I simply dolloped in a few teaspoons of the runny marmalade and piped over some Italian meringue. A little blowtorching set these little afternoon treats off beautifully.