Vegan meringues, impossible you think? Think again!
vegan meringues
It all started with a simple post a couple of weeks back from someone who had experimented making vegan meringues and posted the result in the immensly popular facebookgroup What fat vegans eat. The secret ingredient? Chickpea brine! When you whip the brine from jarred or canned chicpeas, it looks like whipped egg-white. Add sugar, put in the oven, et voilà!
Chickpeas in jar, with photobombing cat
People have been experimenting with all kinds of variations in shapes and colours, adding ingredients here and there to make it more stable (less fluid), using different kinds of sweeteners, and now also making other things with whipped chickpea brine like chocolate mousse. The meringue hype (or chickpea hype) has even resulted in a seperate facebook group ‘vegan meringue – hits and misses‘ where people post photos of their creations.
vegan meringues
So I decided to give it a go. Without any fancy ingredients. And it works!
recipe simple vegan meringues
Just plain simple chickpea brine and powdered sugar, and some drops of lemon juice.
I used the brine of two jars of organic chickpeas (contain chickpeas, water, salt). This gave me 1 cup of chickpea brine.
I whipped the chickpea brine with an electric egg beater for 15 minutes (I added the drops of lemon juice in the beginning), occasionaly scraping down the sides.
Near the end, I added 1,5 cup of powdered sugar, bit by bit whipping it in the mixture.
Then filled a pastry bag and put drops of the whip on a baking sheet (I needed two baking sheets) and put them in a preheated oven at 100° for about an hour.
After an hour, I turned down the oven, and let the meringues cool in the oven for another 90 minutes.
That’s it!
They came out really fluffy and crispy, and full inside.
Admittedly a sugar overkill, and I surely won’t be making these every week, not even every month! But it was a nice experiment. And to think of all the possiblities whipped chickpea brine may lead to in the world of vegan baking! Fantastic!
(PS: the red spots on the photos are drops of cherry juice, I tried adding some to the pastry bag, but not enough to have them colour the meringues).
whipping the chickpea brine
drops on the oven sheet, before going in the oven
vegan meringues
vegan meringues
fluffy vegan meringues
vegan meringues with photobombing cat, again!
The Bruges Vegan 
Oh wow! How VERY exciting! I think I’ll have to have a play with this! Thanks for posting 🙂 Gorgeous ‘photo bombing’ cat too 😛
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Your vegan meringues look really really good and your cat is gorgeous!!
They look fab!
Wow that’s amazing. I never would have guessed in a million years that chickpea brine could be turned into meringues.
This is something Amazing right? Waw even!
That looks great! I’ve missed making meringues since becoming vegan… this would be so much fun.
Now this is amazing! A substitute for egg whites! 🙂 I was always bothered with the foam when cooking chickpeas and never thought it can be used in such ingenious way! 🙂
Thanks for linking back to the Vegan Meringues – Hits and Misses! comunity …. attribution is key to our development, so that we can build a strong base of contributors and experimenters in order to ferret out what’s possible in this new space!
They look awesome. I absolutely have to try these. Break it up and make some kind of sunday or trifle. Thanks for the information. I absolutely have to try these. Love the photo bombing cat!
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I’ve seen this exploding all over the internet- the recipe, not the meringues 🙂 I really must try them. Chrissy x
These meringues look like they came out fantastic! Chickpea brine – who knew. Very creative – love this!
I had never heard of this before, and have now seen two recipes for it today! Looks amazing. Off to buy chickpeas. .
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