melancholy meringues

I was feeling very sorry for myself yesterday after too many cheap reds and pints of beer on Friday night. I perked up by about 3pm, grateful to have my friend back for weekend playtime after her Friday night graduation party. We sniffed around Aro Valley before I came home and pulled myself together (read: shower, hair wash, perfume and make up) for a potluck dinner.

I had made a black doris plum cake for work on Friday, and so had some leftover plum syrup. I also had some left over plum-syrup cream, and some egg whites in the freezer. Having read about these mini chai meringues last week, I was inspired to have a go. My $12 budget electric beaters crapped out just after I added the plum syrup, so I had to manually finish them off. It took ages, but the results were successful. I used the recipe above alongside the classic Edmonds one.

Plum meringues with pistachio cardamom sugar
2 egg whites, at room temperature
1/2 cup caster sugar

Use about half a cup of plum syrup from a tin of black doris plums in the meringue mix, and about another half cup to make the plum cream. For that, add the syrup to the cream, sprinkle over some icing sugar, and beat until whipped. Do not over beat or you'll have plum butter; blergh!

Method
Preheat oven to 120*C. Line baking tray with baking paper. Beat egg whites until stiff, but not too dry. Add the sugar a tablespoonful at a time, beating until the mixture is stiff and glossy. Add the plum syrup, and beat again until stiff and glossy. Spoon out spoonfuls of mixture onto the tray. I mixed mine up into baby teaspoon ones, and bigger ones. I indented the bigger ones with a spoon for room for the cream.

Now, the Edmonds bible says bake at 120*C for 1 to 1 1/2 hours or until the meringues are dry but not brown, then cool. Wayfaring Chocolate says bake for one hour, then turn the oven off, but leave them in for 2 more hours.

I baked mine for an hour, then left them in for about another 45 minutes. They went brown during the first hour, but they tasted more hokey-pokey brown rather than just burnt.

To assemble, spoon some plum cream on top, and sprinkle with some cardamom pistachio sugar. Mine I got for a gift (again from Gewürzhaus in Melbourne) but it's simply granulated sugar, ground cardamom and chopped pistachios. They were adorable! You could just cut some slices of plum for decoration if you wanted.

The desserts were all very cute and tasty. Harriet made chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting, Hannah made panforte and Joan made chocolate shortbread with chocolate icing. Having just met Joan, and having been asked whether I "have a man" or not, and then outlining the sad, sordid chronology, she was quick to offer sage advice around deleting certain numbers from ones phone and becoming totally self-absorbed. Much like the hilarious article in the latest Frankie magazine. Justin Heazlewood provides five things you shouldn't do when you break up, but that you probably will - from "being direct" to "if you want closure start with your legs". I hesitate to say everyone does all of them, but I'm working on it. With meringues and dinners and friends and brunches. Happy Sunday x