Vegan meringue.
You need to let that sink in.
Vegan. Meringue.
Those crunchy-on-the-outside, fluffy-on-the-inside little clouds that all but melt in your mouth. They are super easy to make and without the help of (more or less artificial) egg replacers too.
The answer to all our vegan meringue needs is… Aquafaba.
Aquafaba? Now what’s that again?
It’s basically bean brine. Yep, you’ve heard me right. The juice that comes with canned beans of all sorts that we usually send down the drain. Aquafaba just sounds way better than bean brine. Trust me, you will never look at a can of beans the same way again.
All you need to do to get into vegan meringue heaven is to drain a can of chickpeas (or other legumes), keeping the brine. Then you whisk it just like you would an egg white.
Keep going.
Keep going some more.
Until it starts to form stiff peaks. Just like egg white does.
When it’s stiff enough for your liking, put it on a tray and into the oven.
Keep the door closed for the whole duration of baking (no peeking!) and cool down.
There you go – vegan meringue.
- Juice of one can of beans (the brine of chick peas – also called garbanzo beans – works best for me)
- Sugar (at least the same amount as bean juice)
- Optional: 1 ts vanilla sugar, ½ ts cream of tartar
- Whisk the brine, slowly adding sugar until little peaks form. It will increase in size and turn white. Keep whisking, adding vanilla sugar and cream of tartar if you like, until the mixture forms stiff peaks.
- Spoon on a baking tray or fill the mixture into an icing bag and make little macarons/ nests/ buttons and bake for 1.5 hours at 110°C without opening the oven door to check on them, then turn the oven off but leave the tray in. DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN DOOR for approx. another hour.
- They are best eaten fresh. If you leave them out for a few hours, the consistency will turn marshmallow-y.
You can also turn them into little macarons.
Or make lemon meringue pie. Or pavlova. I’ve also used them to add fluff to the most recent batch of vegan orange muffins and they will be great in my Kaiserschmarrn (to which I’m aware I owe you the recipe). Actually, I’ve put them into a lot of things I’ve baked lately…
There is no need to worry about your sweet things tasting of legumes, by the way. Aquafaba completely loses its beany taste once you’ve whipped it with sugar.
By way of vegan meringue I’ve come across what’s probably my new favourite facebook group “Vegan Meringue – Hits and Misses”. You may want to check that out, if you liked my post.
Have you tried making vegan meringue? How did it go? Feel free to share your very personal meringue secrets below.
I was so excited to try it because it sounds weird, but the photos I’ve seen with the results are amazing! I’ve tried it twice and it didn’t work for me. The first time it was perfect – until I added coconut flour, it totally collapsed! Ugh. I don’t know why it didn’t work the second time because I only used the aquafaba with sugar. It just didn’t form a stiff peak and they were really flat and super hard and chewy. However I enjoyed trying new things, but I think I’ll let this one go. Enough sugar wasted 😀
I thought merengue was a dance.
And you’re right: merengue = dance; meringue = food 🙂