I had extra 2 egg white from my lemon curd and I have always wanted to learn to make meringue.
However one of my concerns was that I don’t like eating them as it is full of sugar. Sugar stabilizes meringue and in order to make meringue cookie, 1 egg white needs a minimum of ¼ cup of sugar. Piglet encouraged me to try. I guess he will be eating it?
I also read up on the science of meringue making as I prefer not to follow recipes without knowing the reasons.
Tips for French Meringue
Environment:
- Low humidity. Not when it is raining.
Equipment:
- Oil free bowl: Use stainless steel or glass
Ingredients:
- Fresh vs Old egg: Fresh eggs are more stable (more acidic). Older eggs produce more volume (thinner but less stable).
- Divide cold: Divide egg white and egg yolk when it’s cold
- Whisk warm: Whisk it when it’s room temperature
- 1 egg white: minimum ¼ sugar. Or weight of egg white= amount of sugar
- Sugar type: Use fine sugar
- Cream of tartar: ¼ tsp per 4 egg white. Acid stabilize egg white.
- Other options besides cream of tartar: ½ tsp lemon or ½ tsp vinegar
Method:
- Beat egg white with hand mixer. Low speed to medium speed setting on hand mixer
- Process: White foam -> Soft Peak -> Firm peak -> Stiff peak -> Overbeaten. Stop at stiff peak.
- Add 1 egg white if overbeaten
- Add sugar and acid at white foam stage
- Add sugar 1 tbs at a time
- Bake at 90C for 1 hour 30 mins
- Turn off oven but leave it in the oven with door closed to allow it to cool (2 hours)
- Trouble shoot: Brown meringue: oven temperature is too high.
Taste wise… Soooooo sweet, flavoured like a cotton candy. I could not even taste the vinegar.
Texture: Crispy on the inside.
All good for the first 15 minutes…
After taking it out of the oven. I showed it to Piglet, took several pictures and chose a couple to munch on.
Then, it felt sticky and tasted chewy. Yikes! I put it in an air tight container in the freezer. It went back to being dry and crispy.
Don’t think I will be baking these that often in the future since it is inconvenient to store with our humid weather.