Meringue

Having been fairly successful with the meringue topping for the "S'moreanne Cupcakes", I decided to have a go at making simple meringues using the Italian meringue technique. This involves boiling sugar and water together until it reaches the soft-ball stage, and then whisking it into already-whisked egg whites. Having remembered hearing Mary Berry say on the Great British Bake Off that it was really hard to over-whisk meringue, I was mindful of not under-doing them. I also decided to flavour them with a few drops of almond extract.

The first time I attempted this, I messed it up completely. For some unknown reason, I poured in all the boiling sugar in one go and whisked it all in. It's caused a problem, because most of the sugar sank to the bottom of the bowl and set there. Therefore there was not enough sugar in the meringue for it to set and bake properly, resulting in a sloppy mess when I attempted to bake them. So I tried again, and did it properly the second time round, pouring in the sugar very slowly whilst whisking at the same time. This resulted in an extremely stable meringue mix, and after three-four hours in the oven at 110°C, out came eight perfectly glossy and shiny meringues. They tasted beautifully of almond, and had a very nice crunch when bitten into.

Second-Round Meringues

Only the other night, I made some giant vanilla meringues, and sprinkled in some cocoa powder to half of them as well. I am very much aware of the fact that they look messy, but I promise that they tasted great, and were even approved by my mother.

Messy, yes.  Yummy, definitely.

I've also tried swirling in various different food colouring right before they go into the oven. The success of this depends on how much food colouring you actually swirl in. One drop is enugh, believe me. I made some green, yellow and red meringues the other night, and most were great. However, the three which I'd added the red food colouring to were not so great, as I'd added far too much of the food colouring, causing them to sink during the bake.

Beckie.