Whenever we make these meringues, we are asked for the recipe. People love them because they are crisp on the outside but mallowy inside.
There are two tricks to getting them like this: one is to weigh the egg whites, so as to get really accurate proportions. The other is to dissolve the sugar in the eggs whites before whisking. It’s the way the Italians do it, though this recipe comes by way of Baker & Spice’s book Exceptional Cakes by Dan Lepard and Richard Whittington.
Note: you really do need an electric whisk or mixer to make meringues this way, the heavier duty the better. You just couldn’t whisk thoroughly enough for the time required by hand.
Ingredients:
Egg whites and caster sugar.
Amounts? Here is how to get it right. Weigh the egg whites in grams, then multiply that weight by 1.95 (easy now that many phones have a calculator). The result is the weight of caster sugar you’ll need.
So if you use three medium sized eggs, you’ll probably have 115 grams of egg whites, and therefore need 225g caster sugar.
Technique:
Set your oven to 150°C / Gas 2 and cover a large baking tray, or two smaller ones, with non-stick baking parchment.
Put the egg whites and sugar in a scrupulously clean, grease-free, heat proof bowl over a pan of simmering water – just as you would to melt chocolate – and stir until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture feels just warm to the touch. Be careful not to actually cook the egg whites.
Put the mixture into an equally clean bowl of a electric mixer and beat using the whisk attachment for at least ten minutes—longer if you’re making many meringues and you’ve got a lot of mixture. The egg whites and sugar should be firm enough that you can turn the bowl upside down and nothing will fall out.
Now for the fun bit. Take spoonfuls of the meringue mix and make beautiful blobs of it on the baking tray. You can go as big or as small as you like. We like to go big.
Put the tray in the oven and immediately turn the heat down to 120°C/ Gas 1/2. Cook for 45 minutes – and perhaps a bit longer if you’ve sculpted really big meringues. You want them to be just set on the outside, though don’t pick them up till they are cool. The best way to finish drying them out once they have finished cooking is to turn the oven off, and leave them in there while it cools (obviously if you need your oven, just take them out and let them cool on their tray before transferring them to a tin or cake stand or whatever).
