I’m not finished with vegan meringue yet. Chick pea brine (or Aquafaba) can be whisked until completely wonderful and stiff meringue and Facebooks vegans (and also myself) now think about in which other applications this meringue can be used. Aquafaba has slightly different properties than the usual meringue made with egg white, because any proteins in the aquafaba meringue have already coagulated. Thus heating will not alter the proteins any further. But aquafaba meringue can be a good way to get air into cakes without eggs, which otherwise can be quite compact. The most immediate use of the meringue is for almond based cakes and cookies, for example almond coookies (“makroner” in Norwegian). Here is my first attempt with vegan almond cookies. The recipe is enough for 16-18 cookies.
Ingredients:
50 g chick pea brine from canned chickpeas
1/16 teaspoon citric acid
100 g sugar
100 g ground almonds
grated rind of a small lemon
Method:
Whisk up the chick pea brine with citric acid in a glass or steel bowl (avoid plastic since lipids released from the plastic may reduce foaming) using a handheld mixer (this volume is too small for a kitchen machine I think) until it becomes a soft foam.
Add the sugar gradually while continuing to whisk. It will become a very stiff and firm meringue. Mix gently into the meringue the ground almonds along with the grated lemon.
Spoon out the batter on a baking tray covered with parchment paper. Be sure to have some distance between each cookie, they will flatten and enlarge when baking.
Bake the cookies at 140 gC for 15 minutes. Let the cookies cool before loosening them gently from the baking paper.
These cookies are gluten free, milk-free and egg-free and thus vegan.
Blogpost by Anne Spurkland, published 29th March 2015
The Norwegian version of this blogpost is found here
