Summer Lollies

First of all, a wee disclaimer.
These are probably not technically lollies - they're not really frozen liquid.
They're not really ice cream bars either, though, so I'm hoping they fall at least broadly inside the boundaries of this month's BSFIC.

I'm honestly not certain anyone is going to be able to equal the genius of Kavey's pickleback lollies - I've genuinely been racking my brains to come up with something similarly brilliant and have nothing. Zilch. Nada.

So instead, here we go - raspberry lollies - maybe not genius or totally correct, but really very yummy - other than actual fruit, my very favourite kind of pudding and super summery into the bargain!

First I made an Italian meringue - you could obviously use any recipe that you have for this, but I weighed out 150g egg whites (conveniently 4 egg's worth) and stuck them into the bowl of my mixer along with 60g caster sugar.
Whilst whisking these to so-called soft peaks, I heated another 240g caster sugar in a little saucepan with about 60g water, until it reached 121oC.
I then kept whisking and gradually poured the sugar syrup into the egg whites until it was all gone, increased the mixer speed a bit and kept whisking (for 5 to 10 minutes) until the whole thing was cool.

This made about a million times more meringue than I actually needed, but I think that smaller quantities would be harder to work with, so we'll just have to use the rest for something else - it keeps
pretty well in the fridge (as long as you can keep your fingers out of it).

I pureed some raspberries (in a sieve - back to basics!) until I had about 85g of sieved puree, added it to about 140g of the meringue and whisked till mixed.

I whisked about 60g double cream, folded that in too and assembled my lollies.

I stuck them in the freezer for probably overnight to firm up.

Some time during the freezing, I whizzed up some freeze dried raspberries (obtained from the AMAZING new Sous Chef website) to a powder, so that, when the lollies were frozen and turned out, I could coat them in delicious (and pretty) raspberry dust...

Pleasing, no?

I'm entering these into Kavey's August Bloggers Scream For Ice Cream party round up :-)