Rainbow Meringue Gems – Recipe

God I've been DYING to use some crazy colours. It's been about two months shy of a year I posted my rainbow sundae cupcakes, and as my readers know, I'm a sucker for garishly coloured food.

My latest entry for Mothercare's blog was Eton mess in honour of St George's day, in which I made some swirly red meringue bites to echo the colours of the Flag of England. Once I'd made it, I thought to myself, 'Tash, you made this with just red and you have six pots of gel food colouring. THINK OF THE POSSIBILITIES.'

So here we are, then.


Aah, I feel better now.

I used the technique of painting stripes up the insides of a piping bag with wooden skewers- and gel food colouring, since the bottled stuff is too runny to stick to the bag. The purple is brighter in real life (looks kind of grey here), but then purple is a notoriously tricky colour to capture on photo.

And here are what the red ones look like:


I'll admit these are more elegant- but they don't have the crazy win factor of their rainbow counterparts.

I made them using the Swiss technique of making meringues, which makes a more stable raw meringue to work with. It's really easy:

1) Mix an egg white with three tablespoons of sugar over a water bath (basically in a Pyrex bowl sat over a pan of hot water) until all the sugar has dissolved

2) Then take it off the heat, whisk it with an electric beater until stiff white peaks form

3) Add a teaspoon of rosewater or vanilla (optional), two teaspoons of cornflour, and whisk some more

4) Fill your piping bag and pipe on lined baking tray which has been lightly dusted with more cornflour

5) Dry out in a very low oven (about 80 degrees C or Gas Mark 1/4) for an hour to an hour and a half to dry out

And that's about it! For a more detailed blow-by-blow tutorial check out my entry How to Make an Eton Mess on Mothercare's blog.


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