The Perfect Meringue

Meringues Swiss style, Italian ones or French ones. I tried them all, love them all, but somehow I did not manage to end up with those snow white mountains you see in magazines and cookbooks. In my oven they always turn an elegant shade of beige. Very pretty, but not the snow white I was hoping for.

As I am not the sort of woman to give up easily, I gave it another go.......guess what? They are crisp on the outside, soft on the inside, but most important, they are white :-)! 

What I did was put them in the oven for two hours at 100 degrees Celsius. After that I turned the oven off and left them there to cool. Which was about four hours in my oven. I think the trick is to leave them to dry slowly, rather than to bake them. So use a low temperature.

The violet swirls were made by using a toothpick, which I dipped in violet food colouring. I gently added some lines to the little heaps of meringue mixture before they went into the oven. I used sugared violets and little white and silver pearls for decoration. I glued them to the meringues with a bit of icing, dusting them with icing sugar afterwards.

If you are looking for a good recipe, you can find one in The Guardian or in the Great British Bake Off book 'How to bake'. 

The baubles, cups and saucers and fabric used in my photo's, are old and new vintage finds.

Sorry I haven't been around lately, but I will make it up to you next week. Wishing you a Happy time. Enjoy the Christmas celebrations and parties!

Love,

Madelief x