Some amazing, crisp, light, melt-in-your-mouth chocolate meringue swirls I made yesterday. It’s so incredibly simple to make and absolutely delicious. All you need is 3 ingredients: an egg white, sugar and dark chocolate. That’s it. 🙂
I find it’s a pretty good treat to have as an alternative to cookies that:
1) uses a lot less ingredients
2) is naturally gluten free and flourless, and
3) is lower in calories, as a bonus (so you can actually eat more 😛 )
I was never a big fan of meringues until I started making my own. If you’ve only ever tried the supermarket variety, I promise you the real thing is nothing alike! The pre-made version often leaves much to be desired and tends to have a weird taste in my experience… but proper freshly made meringue is so delicious. Give it a try and you might change your mind too! 😉
MY TIPS TO PREVENT MESSING UP YOUR MERINGUE 😉
1. Use good quality fresh free range eggs. In my experience, old or cheap eggs (which tend to be old) can be a bit hit and miss, with some not whipping up properly at times.
2. Make sure your whisk attachments and bowl are completely clean. Even just a tiny bit of grease can ruin your meringue.
3. Wipe your bowl and whisk attachments with a kitchen towel soaked in lemon juice or vinegar. This helps get rid of any residue of grease. I’ve seen many chefs recommend this and honestly it changed everything for me. Nearly all my meringue attempts used to fail until I started doing this!
4. Don’t use a plastic bowl or utensils as plastic is harder to wash and is more likely to have leftover grease stuck in small cracks. Stainless steel or glass is best.
5. Don’t let any egg yolk fall into the bowl when separating the egg whites. My favourite method to avoid this is to crack the egg into one hand and let the egg white dribble into the bowl through my fingers. Passing the egg yolk from shell to shell is the classic method, but it can lead to a shard accidentally poking the egg yolk and ruining your egg whites.
- 1 egg (the white only)
- 50g sugar (regular or caster)
- Pinch of salt
- Dark chocolate
BAKING TIME: 50 minutes
Directions
PREPARE YOUR BOWL AND WHISK/PADDLE ATTACHMENTS:
- Pre-heat the oven to 120C (248F).
- As mentioned above in ‘my tips’ sections, start by wiping your bowl and whisks with a kitchen towel soaked in lemon juice or vinegar. This will get rid of any speck of grease that may be left on there (which can prevent your meringue from whipping properly).
WHIP THE MERINGUE:
- Separate your egg and discard the yolk (or better yet, keep it for another recipe). Note: as mentioned in ‘my tips’ section above, the best way to do this without getting any yolks or egg shell in there, in my opinion, is to crack the egg into one hand and let the egg white dribble into the bowl through my fingers.
- Add a pinch of salt to the egg white.
- Beat your egg white on medium speed, with an electric mixer, until it starts looking frothy and foamy.
- At this point, start adding the sugar little by little. Note: I recommend measuring your sugar before starting and having it ready in a little bowl.
- Keep beating until it forms stiff peaks. Basically the tips of the peaks shouldn’t be floppy and droop back into bowl. They should be standing up. You should also be able to hold the bowl upside down without the content falling out. 🙂
MAKE THE CHOCOLATE MERINGUE SWIRLS:
- Line a baking tray with baking paper. Note: just a tip… to secure the paper and make the process easier, add little dots of meringue on the baking tray under the paper, in all 4 corners. That way your baking paper won’t move when you spoon or pipe the meringue.
- Add blobs of meringue, leaving some space in between each. I like to use an ice cream scoop for this.
- Melt a few pieces of dark chocolate in the microwave (in 5-10 second increments, stirring in between). Make sure it’s melted, but not hot before carrying on with the next step. Note: I used this one from Tesco.
- Add a bit of chocolate on top of each blob of meringue and create the swirls using a tooth pick or skewer.
BAKE YOUR MERINGUE SWIRLS:
- Place your oven shelf so that it sits lower than the middle. In my experience this helps prevent the top of the meringues from overcooking and browning.
- Bake in a pre-heated oven (120C / 248F) for about 50 minutes.
- Take them out and let them cool down.
- Store your chocolate meringue swirls in an airtight container at room temperature.
Hope you like them! 🙂
Kimi x
