It was a good long weekend this one. I've baked some amazeballs eclairs for one of my friend's birthdays and celebrated her with rose wine as well! What's not to like?
It was a sunny Sunday as well, which meant going to the park and also ordering our Christmas tree. I can honestly say this is one of the best trees I've ever had! Can't wait for Sunday to dress it all up with our friends.
I say it was sunny, but boy was it cold, so we rushed home from the park to bake these beauties. They are beauties: meringues flavoured with strawberries and black pepper.
Ingredients (made around 60 one bite kisses):
175gr egg whites
350gr sugar
2 tbsp freeze dried strawberry
1/4tsp freshly ground pepper
Method:
Pre-heat your oven to 200C.
Place sugar in an oven proof dish that you have previously lined with parchment paper and put the sugar in the oven for around 10 minutes. This is a tip I got from the Meringue Girls book, as well as the flavour idea :). Heating up the sugar apparently makes the mixture more stable ;). It does work!
While the sugar is in the oven start mixing your egg whites at a medium speed until you get soft peaks.
Remove the sugar from the oven and reduce the oven temperature to 100C.
Start adding your hot sugar one tablespoon at the time and increase the speed of your mixer to medium high. Unfortunatelt it will be quite difficult to do this without a mixer, but hey if you feel adventurous go for it! It is definitely a good workout!
When the mixture is glossy and starts to form hard peaks add your dried flavouring ingredients: the freeze dried strawberry powder and the pepper.
Continue beating until all the sugar is added and then beat some more, for about 5-8 minutes on a high speed until you all the sugar is dissolved (you shouldn't feel a lot of sugar if you rub a bit of the mixture between your fingers).
While the mixer is doing its job, line two baking trays with parchment paper and prepare your piping bag.
Transfer the mixture to your piping bag and pipe the meringues on the tray. Play with it, I honestly still can't pipe them all completely uniform, but hey that's the charm of home made meringues isn't it?
Bake the meringues at 100C for about 3 hours and then turn the oven off and leave them inside even over night to dry them up further. I have removed mine as I still like a bit of a gooey centre.
That's it! Now you are ready to stuff your face and trust me you soooooo will!
xoxo bread addicts!