I love coffee-flavoured sweet treats. Give me a coffee macaron rather than a chocolate one any day (which reminds me that I haven’t written up my fail-proof recipe for these yet), a coffee eclair or a traditional ‘coffee kiss’ biscuit, sandwiched with coffee buttercream and I will be a very happy bunny.
So when I found myself with 4 egg white left over (from experimenting with orange curd), it didn’t take long to decide to make coffee meringues.
My first batch were a bit of a failure. For the second time, I followed Nigella’s meringue cooking technique (turning the oven off completely once they go in and leaving them over night) and woke up to unappetising little mounds. The outsides has barely dried out at all and then they had cracked and collapsed on themselves.
Perhaps my cooker doesn’t retain heat as well as Nigella’s.
So I baked them for another 10 minutes and they were very tasty, just not about to win any beauty contests.
That’s the good thing about these meringues: they are quite forgiving and can be salvaged even if the same thing happens to you. I hope it doesn’t (and the rather more conventional option of baking them in an oven that’s still on worked well for me) but if it does, know that you can always give them another 5 or 10 minutes to get them just how you like them.
Three things to mention before we get down to business: (1) the amount of espresso powder you add depends on how strong a coffee flavour you like – 2 tbsp will give a mild flavour, 3 tbsp will pack a stronger coffee punch, (2) if you can find chopped, roasted hazelnuts, then, by all means, skip the first step, and (3) I like quite a deep hard shell before you get through to the soft chewy middle but if you want them softer, cook them for less time (probably 20 minutes) or longer if you like them completely crispy all the way through
Makes 18 large meringues
Ingredients
- 100g hazelnuts
- 4 egg whites
- Pinch of salt
- 2 tsp cornflour
- 2 tsp white wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar
- 2-3 tbsp espresso powder
Method
Turn on your oven to 180°C and spread out the hazelnuts on a baking tray.
When the oven is hot, pop the tray of hazelnuts in and roast for 10 minutes. Take them out and leave to cool.
When the hazelnuts are cool, rub them with your hands or a tea towel to remove the papery skins and turn the oven back on, this time set to 170°C.
Line 2 baking trays with baking paper or reusable non-stick sheets.
Whisk the egg whites on high power with a pinch of salt until they look like clouds (i.e. white and fluffy) and keep whisking whilst you add the sugar in, a spoonful at a time. Stop whisking when the mixture looks glossy and there is no runny egg at the bottom of the bowl. To test this, tip the bowl slightly to the side and if the mixture slides down, that means it’s liquid at the bottom so whisk, whisk, whisk some more!
Now add the cornflour and vinegar and fold into the mixture. Then add the espresso powder and fold through until there are no streaks of white left.
Finally, chop the hazelnuts, add about two thirds to the mixture and fold these through too. Set aside the final third for decorating the meringues.
Make large mounds of batter spaced apart on the lined baking sheets – I fitted 9 on each. Try to pile the mixture up high as they will sink a little as they cook.
Sprinkle the remaining hazelnuts on the tops of the meringues and pop in the oven.
I found that 25 minutes cooking time was perfect. You can check after 20 minutes if you want them too be very soft and chewy – at this point, I tapped one lightly and could tell that it was only the very outside of the meringue that had dried so I left them cooking for another 5 minutes. You can also swap around the trays to bake the meringues evenly at this point.
When you decide they’ve had enough cooking, turn off the oven with the meringues still inside and leave them for 5 minutes. This gives them chance to cool very slowly so they don’t crack too much.
You can then take them out of the oven to cool.
Keep any left over in an airtight container.