What would you do if you are on a vegan, no dairy diet and crave for sweets. Fed up with fruit sorbet and non dairy ice creams. And your taste buds yell for something sweet. I have got an answer. You make a meringue cookies.Yes, yes I am definitely talking about meringue cookies. That too vegan. Not a tiny minie of eggs.
Well this story of finding vegan, non dairy sweets started five months back, when we both started following Ayurveda medicine for our health issues. This doc would treat you only when you followed his instruction to the T with proper diet. I had no other choice rather than going completely vegan. To top it all K is so fond of sweets. He needs sweets after each meal. Going vegan was not a big issue, you have lot of options. But non dairy was too much.
While googling for such type of recipes, I came across this website Aquafaba. Discovered by Joel Roessel, aquafaba is a liquid retained from boiled chickpeas and used as an egg replacer. To say I was fascinated would be less. More I read and saw videos on you tube I was anxious to try it out soon. You can check his website revolutionvegetale.com or Aquafaba.com for more about its history & science behind it.
To make a meringue, you need boiled chic peas water. I have used canned chickpeas. Took the water and then mixed in cream of tar tar and beat till soft peaks. And then added granulated fine sugar or icing sugar till glossy and firm peaks.Procedure is same as making of meringues with egg whites. Only difference is the time to beat / whisk it. It take around 15 minutes of whisking to reach firm peaks. For this cookies, normally I use twice the amount of sugar to liquid for firm peaks. But here I have used less sugar so my peaks were not as firm and so the shape. We are cutting off sugar too from our diet. This is the second time I have baked this cookies using less sugar, but the sweetness was good.
I have used my Kenwood kitchen machine to make these meringues cookies but you can use normal beater. Only beating time will be more compared to the kitchen machine.
Makes around 20 medium sized cookies
Ingredients
1/3 cup of Boiled chickpea water ( Taken from 400 gm canned Chickpeas tin)
1/4 tsp cream of tar tar
175 gm icing sugar or fine granulated sugar ( I used 125 gm)
1 tbsp rose essence or any flavoring your choice
1/4 tsp saffron extract (optional)
Method
- Pre heat the oven to 100 °C,
- In a bowl with whisk attachment, pour the boiled chickpeas water
- Whisk for about 1 minute till foamy on low speed. Add in cream of tar tar and whisk on high speed till soft peaks.
- Add in rose essence.
- Now add sugar and beat till stiff peaks. It will take around 15 to 20 minutes.
- Fold in the saffron extract.
- Spoon the meringue in the piping bag.
- Pipe the meringues into the desired shapes on a parchment paper
- Bake for an hour till dry.
- Remove & keep aside for 10 minutes.
Notes:
# Flavors can be added according to your tastes.
# There is no flavor of chickpeas in the meringue.