Meringue Kisses

What to do with a 40% off coupon for Borders? Buy an awesome cookbook! I got myself this textbook-looking cookbook on baking and it's truly a textbook at heart. The book has chapter expectations, chapter summary, and questions. There's not many pictures and lots of formulas. I'm not so sure I made the best choice of book, but it sure has a lot of information. :)

The first chapter was on the history of baking. And the next one was on food sanitation and care. Yep.. if you know me, I fell asleep a lot during classes throughout high school and college. And this one, was no different. :p I fell asleep reading the history chapter and when I tried to wake up and continue reading, I feel asleep again. LOL.

Anyways, this meringue recipe is taken from the book. It's really simple and easy to make. The book doesn't really give much instructions on how to do things but it gives you general guidelines on what to do. The author of the book says that in a professional environment, recipes typically only come as a list of ingredients and a professional pastry chef would know what to do given the list without much instructions. So that's the approach that the book has taken. :p I got a list of ingredients and a general instructions on meringues. So I experimented a little with the recipe.

The results: some were successful...


And others were not... :p

Oh well... I had fun with it! :)

For those curious minds who would like to experiment as well, here's the list of ingredients:

100g egg whites

100g + 100 g powdered sugar

method: common meringue

Whip the egg whites till it reaches soft peaks and then start to add the first 100g of sugar a little at a time until it reaches stiff peaks. Then, fold in the remaining sugar using a spatula. Pipe into desired shape and bake in the over at 175F-220F for about 1-3 hours.

For me, the combination that worked best was 175F for 1 hour. I first used 200F for 1 hours and my meringues cracked. But the lower temperature helps mitigate that. :)