Meringue

Meringues have always seemed to me to contain a little bit of magic. Cloud-like in appearance and weight, their crisp and delicate outside melts in your mouth to reveal a slightly chewy interior. Even their sweetness seems to float a little over your taste buds.

Dating back to at least the late 1690s, meringues are theoretically pretty basic. Beating the eggs create a foam filled with trapped air bubbles, and adding sugar gives the it structure. Once this foam has the moisture removed from it, boom! Meringues for days. The trick is to manage the instability of the process - weather, ingredients and your utensils will all play a factor in how successful your bake will be.

To get the balance of your meringues right, try to stick to a 1:2 ratio of egg whites to sugar. For 1 large egg white (about 30 grams), you’ll need to use 60 grams of sugar, or 1/2 cup of egg whites to 1 cup of sugar.

Your egg whites will need to be the right temperature, but that is pretty easy to achieve. Simply separate the eggs as soon as you take them out of the fridge, then cover the whites up and let them come to room temperature - around half an hour should be fine. Cold eggs are easier to separate, and room temp whites will give you greater volume and cut down on the whipping time. Also, make sure you separate the eggs one at a time - you don't want one stray yolk to ruin the whole batch and to have to start again from scratch. Adding a vinegar and a little salt later on helps stablise the whites, and the salt will also cut the sweetness a little.

Because of their super-high sugar content, meringues tend to absorb moisture more readily, and since they are mostly air, making them on a humid or rainy day can have an effect as they take in the water in the air and could stay soft and sticky. Leaving them in the oven to cool also helps to keep your meringues dry so they have a chance to crisp up.

How will you know when your peaks are the right kind of peaky? For soft peaks, the foam will curve back to look a bit like an apostrophe when you lift your whisk from the bowl. Stiff peaks hold their shape when you lift the beater from the bowl. The meringue is done when you can hold a spoonful of the mix and none of it drops off.