Fluffy

In my last posting I shared the vanilla icecream recipe. As you might have noticed, it requires many egg yolks. But what about the leftover egg whites? I thought I'd make some fluffy meringues to accompany my vanilla icecram and make some yummy sweet sandwiches!

Meringues are really easy to make, however a bit time consuming as they need to stay in the oven for 1-2 hours until dry in the middle. 
In this recipe you will need a magical Greek ingredient: Chios mastiha .It's a resin coming out of a tree that grows only in one place in the whole world: the island of Chios!And what's more, only in a specific area on the island!It has a unique taste, that suits the meringeues perfectly! In the case that you can't find mastiha resin in the super market, you can make them using a drop of mastiha ectract, any other exctract you want, or, simply nothing, as this recipe suggests.

 Chios Mastiha Meringues

 Ingredients:

100g caster sugar
100g icing sugar
100g egg whites
optional: 1 piece of mastiha resin (I put it in my multi bender with a bit of the caster sugar until it turned into dust)

 First, I preheated my oven in 100C and lined a baking tin with baking paper.

PROCESS: 
I beat 100 g caster sugar with 100 g of egg whites and the mastiha on the low speed of my electric mixer  (this is really important! Don't get impatient!) for 20' until there were stiff peaks.

Then, I stopped the mixer, and folded 100 g of icing sugar with a spoon really carefully to prevent the meringue from getting unfluffy.

BAKING: 
I spooned the mixture in my piping bag and formed little meringues on my  baking paper. I put them close to one another as they don't change in shape during baking.

I baked them for 1 1/2 hours, until they were dry in the middle. 

I let them dry and saved them in a tin box.

TIPS

tip1: you can add a drop of your favourite extract: vanilla or mastic.
tip2: you can reduce the icing sugar and add some cocoa instead
tip3: if you don't have a piping bag, just spoon them on the baking paper!
tip4: To make sure they're baked I always taste one before I take them out of the oven. If they're not dry, I leave them a while longer and check again. Never fails!
tip5: In the case that you resist eating them at once, you can keep them in a tin box for months! Tried and tested!

Now, how about some ideas on how to eat them?

Eat them alone!

Ctush them and springle them over your icecream.

Make pavlova for one or more in a bowl with some cream and strawberries.

Sandwich whipped cream or icecream between two meringues.

Enjoy!

As far as me, now that I've mastered the art of baking meringues, my next project will be baking macarons!