For Meringue Shells

1. Preheat the oven to 120°C. Put two baking trays together and line with baking paper.

2. Place egg whites and cream of tartar into a large bowl of a stand mixer. Begin beating the eggs on low speed. What you’re doing here is unraveling the egg white’s proteins (these are what will capture the air bubbles you whisk in), they’re bundled up and you need to gently unwind them. A light touch does this far better than scrambling them on high speed.

3. Once the egg whites are very foamy, begin sprinkling in the caster sugar as you beat. Increase the speed to medium, then high, and beat the meringue to stiff glossy peaks – it’s firm to the touch (takes about 5 min). Add the sieved icing sugar and fold in carefully by hand, with a rubber spatula.

4. Transfer the meringue (which has a firm texture and shouldn’t be runny!) into a large piping bag with a round tip (10-15 mm) and pipe round shapes, the size of a mandarin. Garnish the domes with some almond slices and bake in the fan forced oven on the double tray for about 60 minutes.

5. Take tray out from the oven and remove meringue shells from baking paper – with a spoon, empty the shells from the bottom (because of the double tray, the bottom is not very dry and easily removable!)

6. Place shells again on the tray, so it can dry out completely for another 10-20 minutes. Allow to cool on a wire rack and store in an airtight box when cool (you can preserve them for 1-2 weeks!)

7. Mix unfrozen raspberry puree with some sugar syrup and some drops of lemon juice.

8. Wash and cut the fruits in order to prepare a fruit salad.

9. Fill the meringue shells with vanilla ice cream (you can prepare this in advance and store in the freezer, in an airtight box)

10. To serve, put a little bit of raspberry coulis on each plate. Fill some ice cream in each meringue shell and place on plate. Garnish with some fruits and whipped cream, decorate with mint leaves.

    For Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream

11. In a pan, bring the milk and cream to a boil, add the milk powder and mix well, remove the pan from the fire. Open the vanilla pod and add the seeds & pod – cover the pan and let the vanilla infuse for 15 minutes or more.

12. In a bowl, combine sugar and egg yolks and whisk until the mixture is light and foamy.

13. Bring the vanilla milk to a boil, remove the pod and pour it over the egg mixture, stirring constantly. Pour everything back into the pan and cook the cream until it reaches 82°C.

14. As you whisk — you must whisk constantly to keep the eggs from scrambling — you’ll see that the cream will start out light and foamy, then the bubbles will get bigger, and then, as it gets closer to 82°C, it will start to thicken and the whisk will leave tracks. Heads up at this point — the tracks mean the cream is almost ready. Don’t stop whisking or checking the temperature, and have patience — depending on how much heat you’re giving the cream, getting to temp can take as long as 10 minutes.

15. As soon as it reaches 82°C, remove the cream from the heat and strain it into a bowl. Let the cream stand, stirring occasionally, until it cools to 40°C, about 10 minutes (it will thicken even more). You can put the bowl on an ice bath to drop the temperature faster. Cover with cling wrap and let maturate for one night, than put it into the ice machine.