Snow White's meringues

Looking like the Wakatipu a week ago, these meringues are whiter than white, sweeter than sweet and make the perfect heavenly accomplices to dessert, tea parties, cake decor and the like.

Usually meringues are a product of having excees egg whites from making custards and brulees for me.I freeze them for making meringues later when I have more time up my sleeve. Later can mean months.

A cooking tip, when making meringues the egg whites should be at room temperate before you start.

Also you should know one frozen egg white weighs about 40g.
For each egg white you need 60g sugar.
You can work how may you’ve got stashed away in the freezer by weighing the bag of egg whites.

Ingredients:
Sugar
Egg whites

Method:
Preheat oven to 140 degrees. Whisk egg whites until stiff. Use an old fashioned hand whisk, electric beater, free-standing mixer or blender even.
Nigella uses her free-standing blender, I use my thirty year old electric beater which I balance on the edge of my glass bowl and let rip for as long as it takes for the whites to become stiff.

Pour sugar in little and slowly at a time with a metal spoon. Don’t pour the whole lot in at once. Make sure its not grainy from the sugar but satiny. The meringue will take on a wonderful satiny gleam.

Line one or two baking trays with parchment or greaseproof paper or a silicon mat, some sort of silicon non stick lining paper, which at about $30 are available at most homeware shops like Briscoes. I think the Warehouse even sells them.

I use a pickn’ mix recycled Allison Holst’s zip lock bag, cutting the corners to substitute for a piping bag which make just as good twirls. See photos.

Spoon mixture into bag and once the bag is half full of the meringue mixture , unfold the bag’s skirt and give pressure to the meringue within, keeping one hand at the top and one at the tip where the meringue is flowing out of.
Turn out preferred meringues to your liking. If you prefer to use a spoon, that’s ok too. Just plonk a generous dollop of mixture on greaseproof paper!

Sprinkle the raw meringue with almonds or hazelnuts!

Put the trays of meringues in the oven for about 40 minutes, tap them regularly to check how hard they are becoming at regular intervals. When they feel firm (and you can lift one up to check that the underside is cooked) turn the oven off, but keep the meringues in there until they are completely cold.

If you take them out too soon the abrupt temperature change will make them go hard and dry and even crack.

Once they are cold you can keep them for a long time.