Bryanna Clark Grogan’s Vegan Feast Kitchen/ 23rd Century Table

Orgran "No Egg" egg replacer meringues with melted vegan chocolate and pecans!

When I went to my local health food store, Edible Island, in Courtenay, BC last week, I spotted an item that was new to the store-- Orgran "No Egg", an Australian brand of egg replacer that I had heard of but never been able to try. I had read that it will whip up to an almost-stiff peak like beaten egg whites. Up until now, I had only been able to achieve that with Ener-G Egg Replacer, and I have been wanting to try Orgran because it is more readily available outside of North America. So I bought a box and I checked out their website.

One of their recipes caught my eye-- crunchy baked meringues. I decided to give it a try. Not that I ever indulged in them that much as a non-vegan, but many people love them. They are sort of a sweet, blank canvas for fruit, etc, as with the  Pavlova, beloved in New Zealand and Australia.

UPDATE: THIS RECIPE WORKS WITH ENER-G EGG REPLACER POWDER!

I wasn't quite sure about the "citrus pectin", but I went to our little local general store to see what they had. All the had was "light pectin" for canning, so I bought a little packet. (After further research, I see that you can buy "modified citrus pectin", but it is very expensive--it seems to be used for everything from the effects of radiation treatment to arthritis-- and the cheap the canning pectin seemed to work!)

It's a simple recipe and is baked pretty much the same way that egg white meringues are baked. The results in their photo looked great, but I wasn't sure what to expect. In any case, I followed their recipe, using my canning pectin. I also wasn't sure what they meant by "pure powdered sugar", but I just used organic powdered sugar.

Here were the results after beating for 10 minutes:


It fluffed up tremendously! It made ALOT of fluff!

After baking them as directed for 2 hours at 250 degrees F, and letting them try out in the turned-off oven with the door cracked open, I was rewarded with 2 trays of lovely, crunchy meringues!



They were airy and crunchy and slightly chewy in the middle, as they should be, but I didn't think they were quite sweet enough. I think I'll use more powdered sugar next time, although there might be a structural reason for using less sugar-- you never know until you try!

We ate them with strawberries on top:



And we ate them with chocolate and pecans:



They kept well and didn't get soft.  I'll experiment a bit more and post again. As I said before, it was not something I longed for, and it doesn't contribute anything in the way of nutrition (it is fat-free, though), but meringue is the basis of many beloved desserts, so, it's worth finding a vegan recipe that works even if you only use it on occasion! I want to see if this recipe will work with Ener-G Egg Replacer (UPDATE-- it does!), and I want to use it as the basis of some cookies with coconut, etc..

Al the best!

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Vegan Cocoa-Pecan Meringue Cookies!

Another great product from Alice at Angel Food, Ltd. in New Zealand! I wrote about Alice's vegan marshmallow kit in a previous post. I'm not a great marshmallow fan, but they were easy to make, came out just great, and made tons!

Alice's new kit is for making crispy meringue cookies, something I can appreciate much more than marshmallows! I've had the kit for some time and just yesterday got around to trying them. I just made a small batch-- about 1/4 of the box-- and I felt like a little chocolate and nuts, so I added some of both to the mix (Alice said that was okay!).

It's easy-- the directions are right on the package for making 24 cookies. To that recipe I added:
1/8 tsp. salt (added to sugar mixture)
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa (added at end of mixing)
2/3 cup finely-minced toasted pecans (added at end of mixing0
1 teaspoon vanilla (added to the water)

The recipe calls for caster sugar, or super-fine sugar (not powdered). I didn't have any, so I ground light organic granulated sugar in a spice/coffee mill:



I measured the sugar AFTER grinding it. This worked very well.

First you beat water with a 2 tablespoons from sachet A:


It whips up to soft peaks.

Then you add a dry mixture of the sugar (3/4 cup) and 2 1/2 teaspoons from sachet B (and I added the salt). Wow! It sure looks like meringue!

If you are making plain meringues, you bake them at this point. But I added my cocoa and nuts first and just beat to mix them well:





Gooey, thick meringue mixture (the cocoa shows up more when the meringues are baked, BTW):


Then you spoon or pipe (I spooned) the gooey mixture onto a baking-parchment-lined baking sheet and bake at 212 degrees F (100 degrees C) for about 30 minutes, or until crispy.

I made 16 larger cookies, and I had to bake them for 50 minutes, and then let them dry out in the oven (turned off) for about 10 more minutes before removing them to a rack to cool. They turned out really well and would go well with vegan ice cream or fruit.



Alice gives you some suggestions for variations, and you can find more by looking up meringue cookies on the Internet. I found an interesting version made with pecans (as above, but no cocoa), the cookies made rather flat, and then sandwiched with strawberry sauce and whipped cream (vegans can use Soyatoo)-- sounds like a winner to me!

The box makes about 100 small vegan meringues, so, for under $7 US, that's not bad! The mix is available in the US (online) at Food Fight! in Portland, OR; veganessentials.com (they ship internationally); and from Cosmo's Vegan Shoppe from Atlanta, GA. vivagranola.com in Canada (Quebec) now carries it, too.

Enjoy!