Sweet and sour warm grapes with mini meringues

Preparation – 10 minutes

Making your own meringues will taste a lot better, we absolutely adore these little fluffy and crunchy 'candies'. Whipping up some egg whites and sugar, the oven does the rest for you.

Check out the recipe here. If you decided to use store-bought meringues, you can whip up this recipe in no time! PRE-HEAT the oven to 190 degrees Celsius or 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Making the red wine syrup first.

Use a vegetable peeler to get the peel of half a lemon and half an orange. Add red wine and 1 tablespoon of golden brown caster sugar into a small saucepan.

Let it simmer on low heat until the sugar has dissolved and the wine has reduced enough to have absorbed the orange and lemon flavour. That will take about 10 minutes.  

Making the dish – 15 minutes

While the red wine syrup is on the stove, you can create the cookies. Roughly chop up a small handful of pecan nuts, but keep some for garnish. Combine pecan nuts, butter, caster sugar and flour.

The dough will be a bit sticky, use your hands to divide it into small pieces, sort of crumbs, over a baking tray lined with parchment paper. The dough will eventuate, so it doesn't matter how precise you divide the dough.

In the same oven, you can also roast the grapes at the same time. Rinse the grapes with cold water and transfer them to an oven dish. Bake the pecan cookies and grapes in the oven for about 10 minutes, or until the cookies or golden brown and the grapes popped.

Strain the red wine syrup to get rid of the orange and lemon peel. Divide the roasted grapes over 4 plates, also divide the mini meringues and break the cookies into smaller pieces if needed.  

Finish it off with the red wine syrup and the rest of the pecan nuts. Serve immediately, because it's best eaten nicely warm.