Yuzu & White Chocolate Spheres with Toasted Meringue

⏱ 180 min · Serves 4

A dessert worth the theatre: a thin white chocolate shell hiding a tart yuzu curd and a whisper of vanilla cream, cracked open at the table with a spoonful of hot yuzu sauce. Sharp, creamy and dramatically glossy — proper restaurant stuff you can pull off at home over a weekend.

Per serving: 742 kcal · 10.5g protein · 74.0g carbs · 45.0g fat

Ingredients

• 250g good white chocolate (30%+ cocoa butter), finely chopped
• 80ml yuzu juice (bottled is fine)
• 2 large eggs plus 2 yolks
• 90g caster sugar
• 90g unsalted butter, cold and cubed
• Pinch of fine sea salt
• 150ml double cream, very cold
• 1 tsp vanilla bean paste
• 1 tbsp icing sugar
• 2 egg whites (for meringue)
• 100g caster sugar (for meringue)
• 2 tbsp yuzu juice plus 2 tbsp water and 1 tbsp sugar (for the hot sauce)
• Zest of 1 lime
• Edible gold leaf or freeze-dried raspberry, to finish (optional)

Method

1. Make the yuzu curd: whisk the eggs, yolks, 90g sugar and 80ml yuzu juice in a heatproof bowl over barely simmering water. Stir constantly for 8–10 minutes until thick enough to coat the back of a spoon (82°C).
2. Off the heat, whisk in the cold butter a cube at a time plus a pinch of salt until glossy. Sieve into a container, cover with cling film touching the surface and chill at least 2 hours.
3. Temper the white chocolate: melt two-thirds gently over a bain-marie to 45°C, remove, add the remaining third and stir until it drops to 27°C, then warm briefly back to 28–29°C.
4. Ladle tempered chocolate into 8 halves of a 7cm silicone or polycarbonate half-sphere mould, swirl to coat fully, invert over the bowl to drain, scrape the rims clean and chill 15 minutes. Repeat for a second coat, then chill until set and demould carefully with cool, dry hands.
5. Whip the cold cream with vanilla paste and icing sugar to soft peaks. Fold one-third into 200g of the chilled curd to lighten it, keeping the rest of the curd and cream separate.
6. Fill four half-spheres with the yuzu cream, top with a spoonful of plain curd in the centre, then seal each with a second half: warm an empty half-sphere's rim briefly on a hot plate and press the two together. Chill 30 minutes.
7. Make Italian meringue: heat 100g sugar with 2 tbsp water to 118°C, then pour in a thin stream into the egg whites whipped to soft peaks. Beat until cool and stiff.
8. Warm the yuzu sauce ingredients in a small pan until the sugar dissolves; keep hot.
9. To serve, pipe or spoon meringue kisses beside each sphere and scorch with a blowtorch. Sit each sphere on a small dab of meringue so it doesn't roll, scatter lime zest and gold leaf, and pour the hot yuzu sauce over at the table so the shell cracks open.