Delicious meringues with powdered sugar: recipes, cooking features and reviews

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

Perhaps there is no such person who would not try meringue. This airy French pastry with a crispy outside and a soft center is made with sugar and beaten egg whites baked in the oven. Despite the fact that the ingredients include only two products, the dessert is not as easy to prepare as it might seem at first glance. It is necessary to take into account a lot of 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 is meringue. And thisnot just a cake. Meringue can often be seen as part of more complex desserts, in particular cakes. For example, a layer of meringue gives the mousses more tenderness and airiness.

Meringue is used raw and baked, both inside and outside of 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 understand each technology.

To begin with, we suggest mastering the classic meringue recipe in the oven at home. This is a French version of everyone's favorite cake. The classic meringue recipe is considered the simplest and most unpretentious. It is ideal for those who are just starting to master the intricate confectionery art.

List of ingredients

According to the French recipe, meringue with powdered sugar contains only two ingredients:

• egg white - 3 pcs.;
• powdered sugar - 200g

In the basic recipe, it is customary to follow the rule: for 1 part of the protein, you should take 2 parts of sugar or powder. Thus, the proportion of ingredients is 1:2. Professional confectioners, who always use kitchen scales, take not 3 egg whites, but 100 g for meringue preparation. But this is not necessary at home. With a slight deviation in the amount of ingredients in one direction or another, the result will be equally wonderful.

It is recommended to whip the proteins for the classic French meringue just before making the cakes, as they quicklysettle down.

Step cooking

The classic recipe for meringue with powdered sugar is to perform the following sequence of actions:

1. Pour the proteins into a deep bowl or bowl of a stand mixer. A modern device of any power is suitable for work.
2. Begin to beat 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.
3. Gradually, literally by a tablespoon, add powdered sugar.
4. Continue whipping at high speed. After about 5 minutes, the protein mass will become smooth and glossy. If at this moment you turn the mixer bowl upside down, the cream will not fall out and will not drain along the walls. It will hold tight to the bowl.
5. Prepare a baking sheet by lining it with parchment and a piping bag. It needs to be completely filled with a strong protein mass.
6. Using a metal nozzle on a pastry bag, pipe small meringues onto a lined baking sheet. Bake cakes until done.

How long to bake meringues in the oven?

A baking sheet with cakes deposited 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 it is necessary to create all the necessary conditions in order for them toexcess moisture evaporated. Meringues should be baked for 1.5-2 hours depending on their size.

The oven temperature can be lowered to 70 °C if the cakes turn yellow during cooking, or, conversely, raised if you want to brown the products and subsequently use them to decorate a cake.

It's much more difficult to bake meringues in a gas oven where the temperature never drops 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 the oven door needs to be slightly opened and cooking continues for another 1.5 hours.

Cooking features and recommendations

Every self-respecting confectioner has his own secrets of the perfect meringue. It is recommended that you familiarize yourself with them in advance. To prepare the best meringue, as in a professional pastry shop, the following tips will help:

1. Dishes and whisks must be perfectly clean and dry. Even a drop of water or fat can spoil the protein mass. Despite all efforts, it will no longer be stable.
2. Egg whites should be at room temperature. In this form, they not only beat better, but also absorb more air, becoming more magnificent. Besides, why refrigerate squirrels only to send them to an already preheated oven after 10 minutes?
3. It is recommended to add powder, not sugar, to whipped proteins. Large crystals can dissolve completely, and then crunch on the teeth when biting into the cake. In addition, the more grains, thethe mass will be more magnificent.
4. Begin whipping beki should be at the minimum speed of the mixer. And only after two minutes the number of revolutions can be increased.
5. 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 may fall off after baking.

Colored meringues with powdered sugar

These bright crispy cakes can be an original decoration for any cake. In addition, meringues (meringue) can be prepared very easily and relatively quickly at home according to the recipe below:

1. Separate whites (3 pcs.) from yolks.
2. Wipe the bowl and beaters with a cloth soaked in lemon juice to get rid of possible grease.
3. Pour egg whites into bowl.
4. Start whipping them at low speed, and after 1 minute gradually increase it to medium.
5. With the mixer running, add 150 g of powdered sugar by spoon. Then continue beating for another 3 minutes.
6. All protein mass divided into several parts. Add 2-3 drops of gel dye to each, then beat the mass again and you can spread it on a baking sheet in the form of cakes.
7. Bake the meringue at 90°C for 1.5 hours. It is worth noting that when using gel dyes, the finished products may stick a little to your hands.

Italian meringue

In terms of stability, this meringue is considered the best. You need to cook it like this:

1. In a saucepan of 300 ml of water and 200 g of powdered sugar, boil the syrup. Its readiness to check with a probe. As soon as the temperature inside the syrup reaches 109 ° C, you can start whipping proteins (3 pcs.).
2. Meanwhile, the syrup will heat up to 121°C. Now it needs to be removed from the fire and cool a little.
3. When the whites become fluffy enough, carefully, touching only the walls of the bowl, pour hot syrup into them. After 2 minutes, the mass will become smooth and glossy.
4. According to the Italian recipe, meringue with powdered sugar should be baked at a temperature of 90-100 ° C for about 2 hours. When raw, the same meringue can be used to decorate a cake.

How to make Swiss meringue

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 spread like French meringues.

Swiss meringue recipe with powdered sugar is the following sequence of actions:

1. On the stove in a large pot, boil water.
2. Break 3 egg whites into a deep bowl or bowl. Immediately add powdered sugar (200 g) to them.
3. Place the bowl of protein and powder on top of a large pot of simmering water. The bottom of the bowl should not touch the water. Its contents should be heated only by water vapor.
4. Bring the protein mass to a temperature of 50-70 °C. While heating, stir it with a whisk.
5. As soon as the mass becomes warm, quickly beat it with a mixer until stablepeaks.
6. Finish the meringues and send them to the oven preheated to 100 ° C for 60-90 minutes.

Quick microwave meringue

Delicious meringues for tea can be prepared not only in the oven. You can make meringue in the microwave in just 5 minutes. It turns out they are not at all lush, but rather even flat, but no less tasty for that. They can be used, for example, to make a cake. The recipe for meringue with powdered sugar in the microwave is as follows:

1. Pour 270 g of powdered sugar into a bowl.
2. Add 1 egg white.
3. Beat with a mixer until the mass becomes thick enough. At the very end, add a teaspoon of lemon juice.
4. With a tablespoon put the mass on a plate covered with parchment. Put it in the microwave.
5. Cook 1.5 minutes at 750W. Do not open the microwave door immediately. Let the meringue cool down a bit. Ready-made meringues are tasty, sweet and crispy.

Meringue without sugar

Meringues can be prepared not only with powder, but also with honey. It is better to choose varieties such as buckwheat, acacia, linden. Meringues will turn out both tasty and he althy. Well, you should cook them like this:

1. Beat the whites first at a low speed of the mixer, and then increase it to medium.
2. After 2 minutes, add 5 tablespoons of liquid honey one at a time.
3. Continue beating until the mixture is thick enough. Readiness can be determined by the strong furrows that the whisk of the mixer leaves.
4. Put mixture into a pastry bag fitted with a nozzle or into a tight plastic bag, cutting a small hole in its corner.
5. Put the meringue on a baking sheet. Bake them at 110 °C for 1 hour, then turn off the heat and leave the meringues in the oven until cool.

Cooking meringues at home: recipe reviews

Not all housewives get meringues the first time. Some people have had to work on the mistakes more than once before baking the perfect meringues in the oven. According to reviews of the classic recipe, most often when working with protein mass and baking meringue, the following difficulties arise:

1. If you add sugar instead of powder when whipping the protein, the crystals may not completely dissolve. As a result, caramel streaks form on finished products.
2. When preparing meringue according to the classic recipe in the oven, in the microwave or without sugar with honey or a sweetener, the main difficulty is not to over-whip the protein mass. If she stopped leaving furrows, and began to gather in lumps, does not shine, and her surface is not smooth, this 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 be released from the products and collect under them with a thick and viscous syrup. In another way, they say that the cakes had “tears”.
3. It is better to make whipping powder yourself from sugar using a coffee grinder. Potato starch is often put in a store product. As a result, atadding powder to the protein, the mass becomes liquid and does not thicken with further whipping.
4. The best meringues come from Italian and Swiss meringue.

With all the tips and feedback provided, the meringue should come out the first time.