Maple meringues

To go with the banana pudding (which had a fair bit of maple syrup) I decided to have a try at meringues again. I've not made any for years and years, but I do so love the home-made ones!

I know all meringues have the same basic recipe (sugar and egg whites), but I was flicking through my books for inspiration of fun things to do with them - and having seen chocolate and raspberry swirls, I knew I wanted to swirl something into mine too.  I didn't have any chocolate or raspberry in the house - and this weekend was about using up left over ingredients, so I decided to use the maple that was already out from the banana pudding.  This was left over from our Shrove Tuesday evening the other months.  It's actually maple flavour, but I'm working with what I have here - and it's an experiment!

I have a lovely supply of fresh eggs, as my neighbours keep chickens - last weekend I was out in the garden with them for a BBQ (not this weekend, with the downpour), and took some pictures of the lovely girls, and the mess they made when they found the remains of the BBQ! The pictures are on my Flickr site.

So the meringues are easy enough to make, and much quicker now I have an electric mixer - yep - the first time I made them was with a hand whisk! I mixed half the sugar a spoonful at a time and whisked and whisked, and then for the 2nd half, was folding them it in with a metal spoon.  This seemed to make the meringues slightly less stiff, I don't know if I needed to whisk them again?  I shall experiment and research this some more! Once all the sugar was folded in, I then squirted in the maple syrup, folded with a wooden spoon, bit more syrup, fold, and then one final squeeze for good luck.

Then I did pretty big dollops onto the baking paper, and baked the top shelf meringues for 1.5 hours, and the bottom shelf (even though it's fan assisted gas, it's still uneven baking top and bottom), so they had 2 hours.

I confess, I ate one while still warm, and it so so gooey, almost like candy floss. The rest are for this evening, to go with the banana pudding - I think meringues and banana pudding go together? Well, if not, they can be for a slightly later supper?

This time, I took my better camera to take the photos, rather than the mobile phone, so they've got a bit arty....