Super Simple Meringues

Hey there! Wow it's sure been a minute since I've last made a blog post, but when you work 50 hours a week, some things get pushed aside for sleep, sleep and just a bit more sleep. This week at work has been rather slow due to fall vacations, so apart from the endless cleaning the hotel kitchen needs, I've been doing a bit of experimenting.

One thing we always have at the hotel to decorate any type of sweet platter or dessert is a variety of meringue kisses. This is because they're easy to make, cheap, and can be made in bulk. They can also be extremely pretty and add a bit of crunchy texture to any creamy dessert. We were down the the really ugly ones in the kitchen (neon yellow and streaky brown are not what I consider to be pretty colours on food), so I decided to make a batch. Trust me, the recipe I use is just about the easiest in the world! You can use it as it is, burn it under a torch, bake it, or dry it. 

Super Simple Meringue Recipe

250 g sugar
150 g pasteurized egg whites
Pinch of salt
Squeeze of lemon
Flavouring and colouring of your choice

1. Measure and pour all ingredients into a heavy-bottomed pot.
2. Heat over low heat while frequently stirring, else the mixture will cook on the bottom of the pot, and you will have scrambled, very sweet egg whites.
3. Once mixture begins to steam, remove from heat.
4. Beat on high until mixture becomes thick, fluffy and glossy. The mixture is perfect when you pull the whisk out, and most of the mixture is stuck inside. This recipe beats incredibly stiff.
5. Mix in flavour and colour of choice. I use gel colour, as you need to use much less. Too much liquid can ruin the texture and shape of your meringues.
6. If making kisses, pipe onto baking sheet lined in parchment paper and dry in the oven at 85°C for around 6 hours.

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And there you have it. Easiest meringue recipe ever. Now, there are different methods for piping kisses. I used a fancy star tip in my piping bag, and the slight variation in colour is just from switching out the empty pink colour for blue. I prefer to mix colour directly into the egg mixture by separating the meringue into several smaller bowls. You can get streaky colour simply by mixing the colour through less (like the pink meringues shown at the top of the page). You can also leave them plain white as our pastry student does, or smear stripes of colour directly onto the walls of the piping bag before adding meringue to give a stripy effect, as seen below. You're really only limited by your imagination. The blue meringues above look especially pretty when dusted with a bit of edible gold dust!

I hope you enjoy this simple recipe. Let me know how it went in the comments below, or check out my Instagram, Twitter and Facebook under the handle QuiteChefy. Stay warm out there!