Meringue Kisses

You've probably seen meringue kisses floating around on the internet and social media - some of the most famous ones are the colourful creations of the Meringue Girls.  Good news; you can make them at home, and they aren't too difficult to achieve!

The only ingredients for these kisses are egg whites and sugar (and optional food colouring).  To achieve a smooth consistency the sugar is heated up a bit before being beaten into the egg whites.  I really love how they turned out!

Recipe adapted from: Meringue Girls via Bakerella
Ingredients
1 part egg whites to 2 parts sugar
e.g. 100g egg whites, 200g sugar

Gel food colouring (I use Wilton)

Method
1. Preheat your oven to 205C (400F).

2. Once the oven is nearly heated to temperature, whisk the egg whites on low in a stand mixer or hand mixer until bubbles form, then increase the speed to high and beat until firm peaks form.

3. Line a baking tray (that has sides on it to prevent sugar spilling everywhere) with baking paper and pour the sugar onto it, making sure that it's spread evenly.

4. Bake the sugar in the oven for about 5 minutes, until the edges of the sugar begin to melt.

5. Remove the sugar from the oven.  Leave the oven on, and decrease the heat to 95C (200F).

6. Start whisking the egg whites again, on high speed.  Add large spoonfuls of sugar to the mixture, one at a time, whisking in between (you can keep the mixer going, and just spoon sugar in periodically).  Make sure that the mixture is at firm peaks again before you add more sugar.

7. Once all the sugar is incorporated, keep whisking for another few minutes.  When it's done, the mixture should look shiny, feel smooth between your fingers (without many or any flecks of sugar) and it should form stiff peaks.  If you want to make your kisses a single solid colour, this is the time to add your desired food colouring and beat it in until the colour is how you want it.

8. Prepare a baking tray lined with baking paper.

9. Fit a piping bag (I used a disposable plastic one) with a small round piping tip.  If you want to make colourful stripy kisses, you will need to paint the inside of the bag with food colouring.  Take the food colouring and paint stripes on the inside of the piping bag using a paintbrush.  For these kisses I alternated between blue and green stripes.  You can turn the bag inside out if you want but you can just take a long handled paintbrush and paint inside the bag without inverting it.

When you paint the stripes on the plastic bag, the food colouring won't look like a solid stripe - I found that mine kind of pooled together and made me think that it wouldn't look opaque and work - but don't worry, it will turn out fine!

You can use whatever colour combinations you want for your kisses.  Have fun experimenting!  However, I think it looks best if some of the white is left to peek out.

Pre-baking

10. Carefully spoon the meringue mixture into the piping bag - you don't want to smudge the stripes too much!
11. Pipe kisses onto your baking tray.  This may require a bit of experimentation to get the desired shape, but you'll get into the groove of things!

Pre-baking

12. Bake the kisses for 30-40 minutes, until they are dry and can be easily lifted off the baking paper.

13. Let the kisses cool.

Enjoy!  I'm looking forward to making these in heaps of colours!

Coconut (Meringue) Macaroons

It's that time of year - the time when I see a lot of pink, hearts and chocolate all over food blogs and food link sites.  Let's do something completely different, shall we?

The recipe I have to share with you today is for coconut macaroons; delicious melt-in-your-mouth meringues that are easy to make and even easier to eat.  This is a recipe from 1999 that my Mum has written down in her recipe book and it's an absolute classic in my house!

Ingredients
3 egg whites
167g caster sugar
60g desiccated coconut
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
1 tsp corn flour

Method
1. Preheat your oven to 110 degrees C (230 F).

2. Beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks.

3. Bit by bit, add the caster sugar, beating well in between.  Once all the sugar is added, beat the eggs until they form firm peaks.

4. Beat the vanilla essence and corn flour into the eggs.

5. Gently fold the desiccated coconut into the mixture.

6. Transfer the mixture into a piping bag with a star tip and pipe swirls onto a baking tray covered with baking paper or a silicone mat.  You can make these whatever size you like (just make sure that you adjust the baking time) - I like to make mine so that you can eat it in one to two bites.

7. Bake the macaroons for about 50 minutes to 1 hour or until they are lightly golden, dry and firm on the outside.  You really want to dry these out so they're good and crunchy and don't stick to the baking paper/silicone.

Usually at my house we bake them then turn the oven off and open the door and let them sit in there (as we steadily snack on them) to dry out completely.

8. Let the macaroons cool and enjoy!

When straight out of the oven, the macaroons will be chewy in the middle but once cooled, they are crunchy all the way through.  You can eat them by themselves or sandwich them with ganache or Nutella or something of the sort.  I like them plain because you can just pop them in your mouth and munch.

Mini Lemon Meringue Pies

Hello there!  -shouts into the abyss of the Internet-

I know it's been a while since I was last here - in the meantime, I've been travelling, completing high school and, of course, baking!  So, I've mustered enough oomph to sort through all the food photos I have lying around and start posting again.

To make these mini lemon meringue pies (or, as I like to call them, Lemon Meringue Pielets), I used this recipe.  The detailed recipe and ingredients can be seen there.

First, I made the pastry and cut it into circles with a cookie cutter, then pressed the circles into cupcake trays and individual fluted moulds.  I then cut squares of baking paper and filled them with ceramic baking beans (you can also use rice or other uncooked beans as loading).

I whipped the lemon filling up while they baked, then poured the filling up to the edges of the pastry after they came out of the oven.

After the pies were baked, I piped the meringue icing onto the top.

After the meringue icing was piped on, I used my little handheld torch (I like to call it my flamethrower) to brown the meringue.  It gives it a lovely caramelised flavour.

One thing I particularly love about lemon meringue pie is the contrast.  The shortcrust pastry has a bit of a crunch and is only a little sweet, the lemon is smooth in texture and slightly tart, while the meringue topping is sweet and fluffy.

Having pielets is a good option for parties and office birthdays when you don't want to be cutting up and serving up a cake.  Plus, they look so cute!

Lemon Meringue Pie for a special birthday

It was my Auntie's birthday on the 12th, and I asked her what birthday cake she wanted for the big family dinner.  She said she'd like Lemon Meringue Pie, or something else citrussy.

Lemon Meringue Pie?  I can do that.

Thank you to my little cousin (my Auntie's daughter) who helped me mix things and posed beautifully while I snapped photos, and to Mum who made the meringue topping.  You were both great helps!

Recipe Source: Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion (pastry and filling), The Australian Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book (meringue icing)

Shortcrust Pastry

This pastry is fantastic - it has a nice texture, crunch and can be used for sweet or savoury dishes.

Pastry Ingredients

180g unsalted butter/margarine

240g plain flour

Pinch of salt (if using unsalted butter/margarine)

1/4 cup water

Pastry Method

There are more difficult ways to do this, but this is how I do it and it's dead easy.

1. Chop the butter or margarine into squares and put them into a food processor along with the flour and salt.

Whizz the food processor round until the mixture looks a bit like breadcrumbs:

2. Pour in the water...

And keep whizzing until the dough looks like this:

3. Package up the dough in clingwrap and leave it in the fridge for about half an hour.  Longer, and if you're using butter it'll go really hard.  (I did this.  I know.)

Filling

A delicious, soft, lemon filling.  Not too tart, not too sweet.

Filling Ingredients

6 eggs

250g caster sugar

3 large lemons - zested and juiced (I used my Great-Grandma's home grown lemons; they're fantastic!)

200mL cream

Blind Baking

(If you're comfortable making the filling, then put the pastry in the oven to blind bake it first and make the filling while the pastry bakes.  If you are less confident, make the filling first and then blind bake the pastry).

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

2. Roll out the pastry dough between two sheets of baking paper to about 1/2cm thickness.

3. Line the bottom of a 20cm diameter springform tin with baking paper; no need to butter the edges, the pastry is full of butter so will just lift of the sides.

4. Lay the pastry into the tin, try to smooth out the sides so there are no huge creases.  Don't bother about trimming the edges much - you can do that later.  Leave some pastry hanging over the edge of the tin, because the pastry shrinks when baked.  My pastry shrunk.  It happens.

5. Lay some baking paper over the pastry and fill with kidney beans, chickpeas or rice.  (Or something else - you just need something to weigh down the pastry that won't burn in the oven.  If the pastry isn't weighed down, it may become all misshapen.  This is called loading.

Mum asked if unpopped popcorn would be OK.  No, Mum, popcorn is not OK.  I'd rather not clean up popped popcorn from all over the oven).

6. Put the pastry into the oven and bake for 20 minutes.  Remove it after the 20 mins. and reset the oven to 160 degrees Celsius.

Filling Method

1. Combine eggs and sugar in a bowl with a whisk.

2. Zest the lemons.  To zest, scrub the lemons' skin so they're free of dirt.  Then grate the lemons' outsides until you can just see the white pith all over.  Try not to get too much of the pith in your zest.  Tip the zest into the egg and sugar mix.

3. Cut the zested lemons in half and juice them into a new bowl.  I juiced them with a handheld juicer.  Get a strainer, hold it over the bowl with the egg, sugar and zest mixture, and tip the juice into it.  This is to strain out the giant bits of pith, innards and pips.  Whisk until combined.

4. Measure out the cream, add it to the filling mixture and whisk until combined.  Your mixture should look like this:

5. Pour the filling mixture into the blind baked pastry.  (First remove the loading, of course).

6. Put the pie in the oven at 160 degrees Celsius and bake for 35 - 45 minutes until set.  However when the tin is jiggled gently, the filling should still wobble.  Leave it to cool in the tin.  If you want, you can trim the mangy bits off - I didn't; I think it gives a nice rustic feel.

Meringue Icing

This isn't really meringue, it's called 'fluffy frosting' in the Women's Weekly book.  To me, it's a thick meringue that you don't have to bake.  The egg white is cooked by the hot sugar syrup when it's added.

Meringue Ingredients

1 1/4 cups sugar

1/2 cup water

3 egg whites

Meringue Method

1. Combine sugar and water in a small saucepan, stirring over medium head until sugar is dissolved; do not boil.

2. Increase heat and boil rapidly uncovered for 3 - 5 minutes; do not stir after syrup boils.  The syrup should reach 115 degrees Celsius.  Mum and I were glad to use our new candy thermometer!
If you don't have a candy thermometer, after the syrup has boiled for a while take it off the heat and wait for the bubbles to subside.  Then drop 1 teaspoon into cold water.  It should form a ball of soft, sticky toffee when rolled between your fingers.

The syrup shouldn't change colour - if it does, it's been cooked for too long!


3. Separate the egg whites from the egg yolks.  Beat eggs whites in an electric mixer until stiff.  Then pour the sugar syrup into the egg whites with the mixer on medium speed.  Make sure you pour the syrup slowly and in a steady stream.
This will take a while.

4. Turn off the mixer.  The meringue should be very thick and very stiff.

Assembly
1. Make sure the lemon filling is cooled.


2. If it is, lump the meringue onto the pie and spread around.  Traditionally, the meringue has a lot of peaks on it.

3. If you've got a flame-thingy, you can use it to brown the tips of the meringue.  Unfortunately, I don't have one...so my meringue stayed white as white.

Yum.

And closer...

4. Serve the Lemon Meringue Pie just by itself or with heavy cream.  It's beautiful with tea as well!

Tips and Suggestions
 - Mum and I put a lot of meringue on the pie.  The meringue was really really sweet.  I recommend that you don't use as much sugar syrup in the meringue, and perhaps don't put all the meringue on the pie.
 - Be very careful when cutting the pie, as some pieces collapsed and fell apart a bit.  This is because we cut it when it was still warm.  It'll solidify a bit it it is cooled, so make sure that it's cold before you cut.  Putting it in the fridge helps.

Enjoy!