Meringues

Meringues are tricky! I cooked these using the Italian meringue technique.

Ingredients (per egg) BR> sugar
1 egg
1 tablespoon water

Equipment

saucepan
electric beater
baking tray lined with baking paper

oven:
time in oven: 40 mins

preparation time:
make sugar syrup
beat eggs before and after adding syrup

Separate eggs (the yolk isn't used). Beat whites until soft peaks.
Put the sugar in a saucepan. Add a very little water - just enough to wet it. Heat it to .
Beat the egg whites on slow, while slowly adding the hot sugar syrup. Then carry on beating on high until the mix becomes glossy.
Spoon (or pipe) mix onto baking paper on baking tray. (Meringues are very sticky, so the paper is essential!)
Cook in oven for about 40 mins, until firm. I find these hard to cook enough, so they ended up soft underneath. Still nice though!

The problems with meringues is cooking them enough while not letting them go brown. As you can see, I failed on both counts!
This is Italian meringue. The hot syrup cooks the egg whites. It is more stable than French meringue.
French meringue requires you to beat one egg white, then add half the sugar while beating. Finally add the other half of sugar by folding it into the mix (very carefully stirring it in with a metal spoon, trying not to knock the bubbles out). Recipes for cooking French meringues talk rather wildly about lowest possible oven temperature, or even turning oven off altogether and leaving the meringues in overnight!
Swiss meringles apparently involves mixing egg white and sugar, then heating it over boiling water to , then remove from heat and whisked until glossy. I'm not sure about oven cooking temperature - perhaps the same as Italian meringue. (But I'm not sure I've got that right!)