Chocolate Meringue

Sw.me is on the hunt for a good macaron recipe, she is obsessed with maracons and tried trice with a recipe from the newspaper but it never seems to work even after the third time when she followed the recipe to a T, no customization. I think we will try the Zumbo macaron recipe from Masterchef, that should be a safe bet. But for an instant fix we tried Donna Hays macaron mix, it was very good.



Anyway, the first time she tried she left out the almond meal as we didn't have any at home so it became a meringue, but a very nice one at that! I then had to explain to her that the point of macarons are the almond meal. But anyway, off we went to Mum and Pa's so she could show this new twist:



We then tried some proper chocolate meringues and they were a great success, sw.me brought them to an end of term party at school. We watched this excellent tutorial http://www.joyofbaking.com/MeringueCookies.html . It really explained to us the difference between soft peaks and hard peaks etc.



So this is the recipe base sw.me used for the chocolate Meringues: http://uktv.co.uk/food/recipe/aid/630138 .  The salt is to stabilize the egg whites and the sugar is beaten in one tablespoon at a time, to make sure its all beaten in and not grainy.

Ingredients
3 egg whites
pinch of salt
150g caster sugar
1 1/2 tbsp cocoa powder sifted

Directions
Preheat oven to 180C, and line a few baking trays with baking paper.
Whisk eggs in bowl ( make sure its dry no water or grease) until soft peaks form, add the salt then add the sugar a tablespoon at a time until stiff peaks that are glossy form. Test a bit between your fingers to make sure it does not feel sandy.
Using a metal spoon, gently fold in the cocoa powder.
Spoon a heaped tablespoon pf meringue mix onto the trays then place in the oven. Turn oven down to 120C and bake for 45mins.
Meringues will be hard on the outside and chewy on the inside, cool before storing in an airtight container, or before placing a filling in between.




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