After nearly inciting a riot of ravenous vegans last time I posted about making meringue, I’ve tried my hardest to steer clear of the subject, lest I stir that pot again. It kills me that I can’t share the recipe yet, and must wait until it’s published in the next book, but there is good news: You needn’t wait that long to satisfy your meringue cravings! That’s right, the evil genius behind Angel Food is determined to conquer every last impossible baking challenge, and can now help you do the same with their brand new vegan meringue kit.
All you need to provide is the sugar and water, and you’ve got yourself a fluffy mass of sweet bubbles, ready to be baked into classic meringue cookies, pie topping, you name it. Overly excited to just play around with my mix, I wish I had saved some to experiment more with, but I ended up just trying out lots of different flavors. However, I’m betting that it could make one mean meringue frosting for those sick of the standard buttercream, and perhaps even pavlova with a few simple tweaks. No matter what, you can’t really make a bad decision here, since you get four different batches of over 2 dozen cookies by following the instructions on the box.
Whipping up effortlessly into stiff peaks, they looked just like my own meringue, but the similarities ended once they hit the oven. Sinking ever so slightly as the heat bore down, they didn’t look quite the same as how I piped them, and they also developed a crackled look on top. It might have been the sugar that I used that produced that grainy look, as I was too lazy to process my granulated sugar into caster, but I don’t bother to do so for my recipe either. Appearances aside, they tasted as sweet as candy, additively crunchy and with just a pleasant whisper of vanilla. A perfect facsimile by any accounts albeit distinctly more sugary than the version I’m now accustomed to.
My favorite by far though were the chocolate variant I made. Tossing in 2 tablespoons of dutch process cocoa powder instantly turned the cloud-like batter into a medium brown fluff. With just enough chocolate, it’s not overwhelming or unapproachable like some decadent chocolate desserts, but it’s a wonderful treat all the same. Even better yet was when I under baked one sheet of cookies; Hard shells protected an interior of sticky-sweet and gooey chocolate meringue. Although I don’t think they would last long due to moisture issues, I didn’t have enough leftover to find out.
Likewise, the batch flavored with a few teaspoons of matcha were just heavenly. No one else in the family even got a taste of these before I devoured every last morsel!
And of course, with so many raspberries kicking around, I just couldn’t resist making a raspberry version. By grinding down freeze-dried berries into a powder and adding some strained raspberry puree for color, these were practically berry candy, not cookies at all. The same technique could be used for any crunchy dried fruit as well, so that might open up the door to numerous interesting varieties, if you’re as interested in experimenting.
While it says nothing about this on the box, I do have one small word of warning: Be patient, and bake only one sheet of cookies at a time. It might seem like a painfully slow process, but your perseverance will be rewarded, trust me. This is what the bottom sheet will look like otherwise:
The kits should be stocked online at major vegan retailers like Food Fight and Cosmo’s, so if you can hold out just a little bit longer, you can satisfy your meringue needs without any recipe. Until I can get mine in print, I think that these ought to hold you over just fine.