Perhaps you can’t find a person who has not tried meringues. This airy French cake with a crispy crust on the outside and a soft center inside is made from sugar and beaten egg whites, baked in the oven. Despite the fact that the ingredients include only two products, dessert is not as easy to prepare as it might seem at first glance. It is necessary to take into account many subtleties and secrets, which will be discussed in our article. Be sure to present the best meringue recipes with powdered sugar. This will make the dessert more tender, airy, melting in the mouth and prevent the appearance of undissolved crystals on the surface of the cake.
Classic French Meringue Recipe with Powdered Sugar
Another name for this famous dessert sounds like “meringue”. And this is not just a cake. Meringues can often be seen as part of more complex desserts, in particular cakes. For example, a layer of meringue gives the mousse great tenderness and airiness.
Meringues are used in raw and baked form, both inside and outside the cakes, decorating them with fancy snow-white patterns. And meringues are distinguished by the method of preparation: French, Italian, Swiss. To learn how to cook the perfect cake, you need to deal with each technology.
To begin with, we offer to master the classic meringue recipe in the oven at home. This is the French version of making your favorite cake. The classic meringue recipe is considered the simplest and most unpretentious. It is ideal for those who are just starting to master complex confectionery skills.
List of ingredients
According to the French recipe, only two ingredients are included in the composition of meringue with powdered sugar:
- egg white - 3 pcs.;
- icing sugar - 200 g.
In the basic recipe, it is customary to adhere to the rule: for 1 part of protein, 2 parts of sugar or powder should be taken. Thus, the proportion of ingredients is 1: 2. Professional confectioners, who always use kitchen scales, take not 3 egg whites, but 100 g for making meringues. But at home, this is not necessary. With a slight deviation in the number of ingredients in one direction or another, the result will be equally remarkable.
Squirrels for classic French meringues are recommended to be whipped immediately before making cakes, as they quickly settle.
Step cooking
The classic meringue recipe with powdered sugar consists in the following sequence of actions:
- Squirrels pour into a deep bowl or bowl of a stationary mixer. For work, a modern device of any power is suitable.
- Start whipping them at a low mixer speed, gradually increasing the number of revolutions. It is important to achieve such a state that the protein turns white, that is, it ceases to be transparent.
- Gradually, literally over a tablespoon, add powdered sugar.
- Continue the whipping process at high speed. After about 5 minutes, the protein mass will become smooth and glossy. If at this moment the mixer bowl is turned upside down, the cream will not fall out and will not drain down the walls. He will hold fast to the bowl.
- Prepare a baking sheet, covering it with parchment, and a pastry bag. It must be completely filled with a strong protein mass.
- Using a metal nozzle on a pastry bag, place small meringues on a laid baking sheet. Bake cakes until cooked.
How many bake meringues in the oven?
A baking sheet with cakes set out using a pastry bag or a tablespoon is sent to an oven preheated to a temperature of 100 ° C. In general, the technology for making meringues is not to bake them, but to let them dry. This means that you need to create all the necessary conditions so that excess moisture evaporates from them. Meringue should be baked 1.5-2 hours, depending on their size.
The temperature of the oven can be lowered to 70 ° C if the cakes turn yellow during cooking, or, conversely, raised if it is necessary to brown the products and subsequently use them to decorate some kind of cake.
It is much more difficult to bake meringues in a gas oven, in which the temperature does not drop below 150 ° C. In this case, the oven is heated to the lowest possible temperature and in this mode, the cakes are baked for the first 15 minutes. Then, open the oven door and continue cooking for another 1.5 hours.
Features of preparation and recommendations
Each self-respecting pastry chef has his own secrets of perfect meringue. It is recommended that you familiarize yourself with them in advance. To prepare the best meringues, as in a professional pastry shop, the following tips will help:
- Crockery and whisk should be perfectly clean and dry. Even a drop of water or fat can ruin a protein mass. Despite all efforts, it will no longer be stable.
- Egg whites should be at room temperature. In this form, they not only whip better, but also take in more air, becoming more magnificent. In addition, why cool the squirrels so that after 10 minutes send them to an already preheated oven?
- Powdered, not sugar, is recommended in whipped proteins. Large crystals can dissolve to the end, and then crunch on the teeth when biting a cake. In addition, the more grains, the more magnificent the mass will turn out.
- Begin to whip the beks at the minimum speed of the mixer. And only minutes after two turns can be increased.
- Powdered sugar should be added to the protein mass slowly and in small portions. If you pour it out quickly and do not knead well enough, the meringues after baking may fall.
Colored meringues with icing sugar
These bright crispy cakes can be the original decoration of any cake. In addition, it is very easy and relatively fast to cook meringues (meringues) at home according to the recipe suggested below:
- Separate the squirrels (3 pcs.) From the yolks.
- Wipe the bowl and whisk with a napkin moistened with lemon juice to get rid of possible fat.
- Pour the squirrels into the bowl.
- Start whipping them at a low speed, and after 1 minute, gradually increase it to medium.
- Without stopping working as a mixer, add 150 g of powdered sugar in a spoon. After that, continue to beat for another 3 minutes.
- All protein mass divided into several parts. Add 2-3 drops of gel dye to each, and then beat the mass again and you can lay it on a baking sheet in the form of cakes.
- Bake meringues at a temperature of 90 ° C for 1.5 hours. It is worth noting that when using gel dyes, finished products can stick a little to your hands.
Italian meringue
In terms of stability, such a meringue is considered the best. You need to cook it like this:
- In a stewpan of 300 ml of water and 200 g of powdered sugar, boil the syrup. His willingness to check with a probe. As soon as the temperature inside the syrup reaches 109 ° C, you can start whipping proteins (3 pcs.).
- Meanwhile, the syrup will warm to 121 ° C. Now it needs to be removed from the heat and cool a little.
- When the squirrels become quite lush, carefully, touching only the walls of the bowl, pour hot syrup into them. After 2 minutes, the mass will become smooth and glossy.
- According to the Italian recipe, meringues with powdered sugar should be baked at a temperature of 90-100 ° C for about 2 hours. In raw form, the same meringue can be used to decorate the cake.
The method of cooking Swiss meringues
The whipped protein mass prepared according to the following recipe is highly stable. This means that meringues hold their shape well in the oven and do not spill out like French meringues.
The Swiss meringue recipe with powdered sugar consists in the following sequence of actions:
- Boil water on a stove in a large pot.
- Break 3 squirrels into a deep bowl or bowl. Immediately add powdered sugar (200 g) to them.
- Place a bowl of protein and powder on top of a large pot of boiling water. The bottom of the bowl should not touch water. Its contents should be heated only from water vapor.
- Bring the protein mass to a temperature of 50-70 ° C. Stir it with a whisk during heating.
- As soon as the mass becomes warm, quickly beat it with a mixer until stable peaks.
- Decorate the meringues and send them to the oven preheated to 100 ° C for 60-90 minutes.
Quick meringue in the microwave
Delicious meringues for tea can be prepared not only in the oven. You can make meringues in the microwave in literally 5 minutes. It turns out they are not lush at all, but rather even flat, but from this no less tasty. They can be used, for example, to make a cake. The recipe for meringue with powdered sugar in the microwave is as follows:
- Pour 270 g of powdered sugar into a bowl.
- Add 1 egg white.
- Beat with a mixer to make the mass thick enough. At the very end, add a teaspoon of lemon juice.
- Put a tablespoon of the mass on a plate covered with parchment. Put it in the microwave.
- Cook for 1.5 minutes at a power of 750 watts. Do not open the microwave door immediately. Let the meringues cool down a bit. Ready-made meringues are delicious, sweet and crunchy.
Meringue without sugar
Meringues can be prepared not only with powder, but also with honey. It is better to choose such varieties as buckwheat, acacia, lime. Meringues will turn out both tasty and healthy. Well, they should be cooked like this:
- Beat the whites first at a slow mixer speed, and then increase it to medium.
- After 2 minutes, add 5 tablespoons of liquid honey one at a time.
- Continue the whipping process until the mass is thick enough. Readiness can be determined by the strong furrows that the mixer whisk leaves.
- Transfer the mass into a pastry bag with a nozzle or in a dense plastic bag, cutting a small hole in its corner.
- Put the meringues on a baking sheet. Bake them at a temperature of 110 ° C for 1 hour, after which turn off the heat, and leave the meringues in the oven until completely cooled.
Cooking Meringue at Home: Recipe Reviews
Not all hostesses get meringues the first time. Some more than once had to do the work on mistakes before baking perfect meringues in the oven. According to reviews of the classic recipe, most often when working with protein mass and baking meringues, the following difficulties arise:
- If you add sugar instead of powder when whipping the protein, then the crystals may not completely dissolve. As a result, caramel drips form on the finished products.
- When preparing meringues according to the classic recipe in the oven, in the microwave, or without sugar with honey or sweetener, the main difficulty is not to over-flush the protein mass. If she stopped leaving furrows, and began to gather in lumps, it does not shine, and its surface is not smooth, which means that the protein was destroyed during whipping. We can say that the mass is spoiled. If you make meringue from it, then during baking water will stand out from the products and collect under them a thick and viscous syrup. In another way they say that “tears” came out of the cakes.
- It is better to make powder for whipping yourself from sugar using a coffee grinder. Potato starch is often put in a store product. As a result, when powder is added to the protein, the mass becomes liquid and does not thicken with further whipping.
- The best meringues are obtained on the Italian and Swiss meringues.
If you consider all the tips and reviews presented, meringues should work out the first time.