I recently got a copy of Nick Malgieri's Perfectly Light Desserts cookbook, and while flipping through it I found a perfect recipe for Passover: Ginger Meringue Kisses. Although meringues are a obvious choice for Passover, I usually stick with flourless cakes because I think meringues can be a bit boring. But this meringue recipe looked like it was something special -- a sweet crunchy meringue cookie with the hot flavor of crystallized ginger.
The recipe requires only four ingredients. You whip egg whites with salt and sugar until stiff and then fold in more sugar and diced crystallized ginger. That's it. The recipe says you should drop irregular mounds of the batter onto a parchment-lined pan, but I am compulsive about this sort of thing and I used a #40 scoop to portion the batter so that all of the meringues would be the same size and shape. You bake the meringues at low temperature (250 degrees) until they are crisp outside but still moist inside; mine took about 55 minutes to bake and they were slightly browned outside.
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Because I had used a scoop to form the cookies, they ended up looking like marshmallows. The shape was a little unusual for meringues -- which are often piped into decorative shapes or dropped into mounds with pointy tops -- but I thought they were pretty attractive. The outsides of the meringues were crisp and perfectly dry (I could throw them into a container for storage without worrying about them sticking to each other), but the insides were moist and very chewy. The ginger was evenly distributed in the meringues and the spicy flavor of the chewy ginger bits was fantastic.
These meringues are excellent, and my tasters loved them. They present a wonderful contrast of flavors and textures, and while they are light as air, they are full of flavor and very satisfying. You get a lot of bang for your buck from just four ingredients, and these meringues are a delightful dessert for any occasion.
Recipe: "Ginger Meringue Kisses" from Perfectly Light Desserts by Nick Malgieri and David Joachim.
Previous Post: "Baked Sunday Mornings: Meringues," June 2, 2013.
The recipe requires only four ingredients. You whip egg whites with salt and sugar until stiff and then fold in more sugar and diced crystallized ginger. That's it. The recipe says you should drop irregular mounds of the batter onto a parchment-lined pan, but I am compulsive about this sort of thing and I used a #40 scoop to portion the batter so that all of the meringues would be the same size and shape. You bake the meringues at low temperature (250 degrees) until they are crisp outside but still moist inside; mine took about 55 minutes to bake and they were slightly browned outside.
These meringues are excellent, and my tasters loved them. They present a wonderful contrast of flavors and textures, and while they are light as air, they are full of flavor and very satisfying. You get a lot of bang for your buck from just four ingredients, and these meringues are a delightful dessert for any occasion.
Recipe: "Ginger Meringue Kisses" from Perfectly Light Desserts by Nick Malgieri and David Joachim.
Previous Post: "Baked Sunday Mornings: Meringues," June 2, 2013.
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