Chocolate Meringue Cookies Recipe • Food Folks and Fun (2024)

FAQs

What must be avoided when making meringue? ›

Thanks to the modern mixer, meringue making is a lot easier and older eggs aren't necessary. In fact, older eggs create a less stable foam because the liquid drains more easily from the bubbles. As a general rule of thumb, if stability is more important than volume, use fresher eggs.

No yolks here! Surprisingly, fat is the enemy of a good meringue. Think about it this way: Egg yolks are what you use when you want a dense, luscious dessert like mousse or chocolate pudding. Egg whites provide the lightest, airiest texture you can imagine.

Any kind of grease ruins meringue. That means that your cooking utensils need to be immaculately clean. Even if you're sure they're clean but they've been sitting in your kitchen for a while, run some hot, hot water over them and dry with a clean dish towel or paper towel.

Cornstarch: Cornstarch is an excellent way to foolproof your meringue. Use it to create added fluff and keep your hard-won volume from shrinking. Cream of Tartar: Often added in when making meringues, acidic cream of tartar provides lift and stabilization.

A couple ideas… never use a plastic bowl, metal or glass only and make sure there is not even a drop of egg yolk. Fat will cause your whites to not reach stiff peaks. Also, adding cream of tartar or a little lemon juice will help make a solid meringue.

Acid. Whether it be vinegar, lemon juice, cream of tartar, or a combination, an acid will greatly improve the structure of meringue. Acid not only helps meringue whip up and aerate more quickly, it also keeps it stable. Without acid, meringue is more likely to collapse either during or after mixing.

Slow and steady is the fast and hard rule for any meringue. Start slow when whipping the whites for small and stable bubbles, slowly up the tempo so you don't over beat and then slowly add the sugar. This goes for your oven too. We're not cooking, so much as drying out the meringue.

Which meringue is the hardest to make? ›

Italian Meringue Recipe

This type of meringue is commonly known as the most challenging of the three to master, but with the right technique you can create delicious desserts topped with this fluffy Italian treat. Like most meringue recipes, Italian meringue starts with sugar, water and egg whites.

Once baked, French meringue should be crisp and light, but not browned, when done cooking. Be sure to bake them slowly at low heat. You will know when they are done when the baked meringue can easily be lifted off a piece of parchment and the bottoms are dry.

Over whip the egg whites and you risk making them too firm and they will risk losing the moisture that they hold. This will affect your meringue's crispness, as well as making it more likely to collapse or weep beads of sugar. As my meringue guru Gary Mehigan advises: “If you over whip the egg whites you cannot fix it.

While getting some egg whites with your yolks shouldn't impact your recipe too severely, getting egg yolks in egg whites can ruin your delicate French macarons and smooth meringues because the fat from the yolk minimizes the egg white's ability to fluff into stiff peaks.

The Italian meringue is the most stable type of meringue so it is sometimes favoured over using a French meringue, it is stable because the melted sugar cooks the egg whites, resulting in a soft, glossy finish. It is most often used for piping on top of pastries and desserts because it holds its shape so well.

2 Answers. The easiest way to prevent meringue from weeping is by adding a teaspoon of cornstarch to the recipe, which will absorb the excess moisture that causes it. If you're a bit adventurous, you can also opt to sprinkle some cookie crumbs over your filling so when it weeps, the crumbs will absorb the moisture.

Meringue rule 1: Don't let any egg yolk wind up in your bowl. This was the first rule I learned in culinary school. Yolks equal fat, and fat makes it pretty much impossible for the proteins in your egg whites to unravel and start forming bubbles.

Fat interferes with the formation of a good foam—and fat clings to plastic. No matter how carefully you clean a plastic bowl, odds are good that a bit of grease remains behind. It's preferable—and easier! —to use a glass or stainless steel bowl to produce a fluffy meringue.