Raspberry Aquafaba Meringues

 

Since we’ve been grocery shopping less often and trying to use pantry staples for meals lately, I’ve been eating more chickpeas. And what’s left when you use canned chickpeas in recipes? Chickpea brine– or, to use another term, aquafaba.

I’ve used aquafaba before to make macarons and they turned out well, so I thought I’d give it another try and make some meringues. However, since my chickpeas weren’t low-sodium (as is usually recommended for aquafaba recipes), I was wary of making a plain vanilla meringue recipe– I worried that the salt might come through too strongly. So instead I decided to add a few spoonfuls of raspberry Jell-o powder for flavor and color, figuring that the raspberry flavor would disguise any lingering salt.

The finished meringues were light and airy and delicious– they’re actually even more melt-in-your-mouth than meringues made with egg whites! Seriously, egg-white meringues still retain a slightly chewy quality at the very end as you crunch into them, but these literally just melt away on your tongue and disappear. The raspberry Jell-o came through nicely, and I can definitely see using other flavors in the future for a pastel rainbow of meringues. All in all, I like them!

Raspberry Aquafaba Meringues

Brine from a 15-oz can of chickpeas, chilled

1/4 tsp. cream of tartar

6 tbs. sugar

2 tbs. raspberry Jell-o powder (not the sugar-free kind)

• Preheat oven to 200 degrees F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
• In a small bowl, combine sugar and Jell-o powder.

• In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine aquafaba and cream of tartar.
• Whip until foamy, then start adding your sugar mixture one tablespoon at a time.
• Continue whipping until the mixture gets fluffy, lighter in color, and forms stiff peaks.

• Transfer to a piping bag fitted with a star tip and pipe onto baking sheets.

• Bake for about 1.5 hours, until firm to the touch (the big ones on this pan took more like 2 hours). Turn oven off, crack the oven door, and let dry for at least another hour (overnight is best). Cool completely, and store in an airtight container at room temperature.