I have never been a big fan of meringues until now. I just found them too sweet and there wasn't much else in flavour that could excite me.
Recently meringues seem to have a moment, overtaking my favourite, the macaron. They are not dissimilar when it comes down to the ingredients so I thought I will give it a try. Meringues are actually easier to make than macarons with just two main ingredients: egg whites and sugar. You can introduce flavour with freeze dried raspberries, cocoa or instant coffee powder and get quite creative with food colouring to make them look the part. Or make plain ones to be the base of some great desserts like Eton Mess or a classic pavlova. Quite a lot you can do with such a humble base recipe so no wonder it is exciting so many people.
MERINGUE KISSES
2 egg whites
pinch of salt
100g caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
pink food colouring gel
Pre-heat the oven to 150°C. Whisk up the egg whites and the salt in a clean metal bowl. When the egg whites begin to stiffen, slowly beat in the caster sugar until shiny and silky. Stir in the vanilla essence and mix. To get the pink stripe effect put some food colouring gel as stripes on the inside of the piping bag from the nozzle up. Fill with the mixture and pipe onto a baking paper. Bake in the oven for about 30-40 min depending on size. Leave them in the oven to cool down so they can dry out completely.
