Everyone has their Achilles bake, and mine has always been the same: meringue, the crispy, chewy friend of my tastebuds, is my kitchen nemesis.
I get that homemade versions are meant to be a bit more toothsome than the dry, crumbly store-bought versions, but mine always end up with the texture of chewing gum (see those infuriating puddles of shame below).
A recent pavlova attempt almost broke me. Nothing worked; I lowered the oven temperature, beat the sugar in super-slowly, let the base cool in the oven overnight. I couldn’t catch a break.
So, I did what I always do when I’m in dessert despair ― I turned to recipe developer, author, and the guru some of my favourite bakeries rely on in their time of knead (teehee), Nicola Lamb.
People, rejoice: one tip from the pastry pro has led me to finally, finally produce my very first successful meringue.
What’s the secret?
In the pavlova edition of her weekly newsletter Kitchen Projects, Nicola said that a weeping meringue is often due to undissolved sugar.
I had been following a recipe that suggested whisking my meringue mix to “stiff, glossy peaks,” which took about four minutes ― I was terrified of overbeating it, which I believed would lead to limp, flaccid results.
But in both her newsletter and her baking book Sift, Nicola says it’s very hard to overbeat meringue and under-beating it can lead to poor sugar incorporation.
So, forget your meagre beating times ― once I added the sugar, she recommended I keep going on medium for at least 15 minutes.
The best test to see whether it’s done, though, is to “Rub the meringue [mix] in between your fingers to check,” she wrote.
If you notice any grittiness, your sugar is not properly dissolved. It’s the trick a chronically unsure meringue mixer like me needed to achieve my first successful pavlova base.
Does it have to be 15 minutes?
Nicola recommends a 5-10 minute-long spin after the sugar’s added in Sift, which is a little shorter. The grit test should stay true either way.
Another piece of advice from Recipe Tin Eats that I did find helpful was to use cold eggs when separating the yolk from the white, and then allow the whites to come to room temperature.
Eggs are easier to separate when cold, but the whites don’t fluff up as well when chilly, so this is a great compromise.
And yes, Mary Berry’s advice holds true: a meringue cooled in the oven for as long as possible is far better than one yanked from its warm home prematurely.