Almost all desserts are easy to veganize, but meringue has long been considered elusive. It is, after all, mostly made out of egg whites, and you can't just use egg replacer. But the New Zealand based company Angel Food which also makes kits for vegan marshmallows has somehow made it possible with their kit.
Besides normal meringues, it is possible to use the kit to make vegan pavlova, Baked Alaska (a dessert containing cake, ice cream and meringue) or meringue frosting. Or you can add things like cocoa powder to the mix for chocolate meringues.
You can make a total of 100 meringue cookies from the kit. The included recipe is for 25 meringues, so you don't have to make all at once. The kit costs about $6 and you can find a list of vendors on Angel Food's website.
Ingredients
One might think that making vegan meringues requires dozens of strange chemicals, but actually the ingredient list is quite short.
- rice starch
- tapioca starch
- emulsifiers E475 and E471 (both vegetable-based fatty acid derivatives)
- stabilizers (methylcellulose, xanthan gum)
Just like normal meringues, these meringues are virtually fat-free. There is also no soy in there.
You don't need anything else besides these ingredients but water and castor sugar (superfine granulated sugar).
Making the Meringues
The meringues are quite easy to make. All you need is a mixer, preferably a stand mixer. The process is almost easier than the making of traditional meringues, because you don't have to fool around with the separation of egg whites.
Some water is added to two tablespoons of sachet A and this mixture is whipped up until fluffy. 2.5 teaspoons of sachet B is mixed with castor sugar and whipped into the other mixture. The result is a very fluffy but also very stiff, sticky mass.
The mass is spooned or piped onto a baking sheet and baked at 100C for 30 minutes (for crispy meringues - take them out earlier if you want meringues still gooey on the inside).
Results
The meringue mixture didn't take too long to make, but proved a bit problematic with a hand-held mixer - when whipping the sticky mass it "climbed" to the top of the blades, which caused some momentary scares as whether it would make its way inside of the machine. Luckily that didn't happen.
The piping was also somewhat messy. A good, durable piping bag is recommended (you can pipe many things with a normal plastic bag, but it doesn't really work here). If you find piping too much of a hassle, you can just spoon it, but then the result won't be as pretty.
The meringues sink a bit in the oven, retaining their piped shape, but getting a bit flatter. They also have a slightly grainy texture on the surface. Biting into a crisp meringue is a bit surprising, as the thing is hollow, unlike normal meringues. But other than that it is like meringue and tastes very good. There is something addictive about them.
Adding a bit of vanilla extract resulted in a batch of meringues with a lovely hint of marshmallow and cotton candy to their taste. An even better addition was blueberry powder (powdered freeze-dried blueberries), which unfortunately did not result in a fancy blue or purple color, but the blueberry taste is exquisite.
See Also
How to Make Christmas Chocolates (vegan)
My Sweet Vegan (cookbook review)
 |
