Ingredients:
3 egg whites, at room temperature
pinch salt
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 oz freeze dried raspberries
Directions:
Preheat oven to 250. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Set aside.
Place the raspberries in a Vitamix, mortar and pestle or food processor and grind until it forms a powder. Whisk the mixture through a fine sieve to remove any seeds/chunks into a bowl. Measure out 3 1/2 tablespoons of powder. Place in a bowl and whisk in the sugar.
Meanwhile, in the bowl of a stand mixer or a regular bowl and using a hand mixer, beat the eggs, salt, and cream of tartar together until soft peaks form. While the mixer is still running, slowly stream in the raspberry/sugar mixture. Beat until stiff peaks form. Using a regular dining teaspoon and your fingers or a second spoon, place heaping spoonfuls of meringue on the lined baking sheet. They can be close together as they will not spread. When all of the meringue is on the baking sheet, place it in the oven for 1 1/2 hrs. After the time is up, turn off the oven, leaving the meringues inside, and let them hang out for one hour.
Yield: about 30 meringues
My thoughts:
As you may have guessed, I am not one for fussy details. I piped exactly 3 meringues before the bag started to leak so I thought I’d go rustic. You can, of course, pipe your meringues if you want them extra cute but it really isn’t necessary. I get a lot of emails from people who say they don’t bake because they don’t know how to make swirly icing or they don’t have piping bags and I am here to say you really don’t need them. These meringues are just as tasty and for what I am ultimately doing with them (Raspberry Eton Mess), their appearance doesn’t matter. Frankly, even if you were serving these as-is they are tasty and pretty and people will be so impressed you made them yourself vs. buying them at the store (which I was tempted to do) they won’t care what they look like.
I was really excited to remember that I had some leftover freeze-dried raspberries from making my Very Berry Rice Krispies Treats so rather than boring vanilla meringues I could make raspberry ones! Any freeze-dried fruit should work. The flavor is light (as are meringues!) but very raspberry-y and it turned them into a very pretty pink color.
