So I recreated the toffee popcorn cake yesterday for my brother’s 30th and seeing as it was a yellow cake I once again had a jugful of egg whites leftover. I decided to make some meringues and sandwich them together with cream and chocolate. Here’s the results 😀
I took the basic meringue recipe from my old reliable BBCgoodfood site (http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2445/ultimate-meringue) and I adapted it to accommodate for the 6 egg whites that I had. I preheated the oven to 100C (fan). I whisked the egg whites until stiff and then added in 172g of caster sugar, a tablespoon at a time until the mixture was thick and glossy. I added in 172g of icing sugar a third at a time and folded it in.
At this point I was feeling very festive so I scooped half of the mix into another bowl and added a few drops of green food colouring into one bowl and a few drops of red food colouring into the other bowl. I stirred the colouring in a little but not completely, so it was nice and swirly. Then I used two spoons to make colourful mounds onto some baking parchment and put them into the oven. Now I made my mounds mahoosive so they took a lot longer than the recipe’s suggestion of 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 hours, it was closer to 2 hours and a bit. If they sound crisp when you tap them then they’re done. Leave them to cool, overnight is usually best if you have the time.
I noticed about halfway through the bake that the meringues had begun to weep, which was a first for me, so I’d say I might have added in too much sugar at once or over whisked them. Thankfully melted chocolate covers a myriad of things, phew! Next I made some Chantilly cream by whisking up a small tub of double cream and then added in a teaspoon of icing sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla extract and tasted it to see if it was my kind of sweet. Once the chocolate had set I put a dollop of cream on one red one and sandwiched a green one on top and continued until I had kind of Christmassy looking meringue sandwiches like this;
The Result The meringues were lovely and crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside, my kind of meringue, the cream and chocolate added an extra bit of texture to them. I was pretty tempted to put a smidge of the salted caramel in the middle but I think that might have been a tad too sweet even for me. 🙂
Fernweh with T 