The Amazing Eggless Meringue Cookies #recipe from Molly MacRae

 

A couple of weeks ago I posted my experiment replacing the eggs in Jammy Muffins with flax “eggs” made from ground flaxseed meal. The muffins were delicious and I’ll be happy to use flax “eggs” again. For today I experimented with substituting aquafaba for the eggs in meringue cookies.

First a bit of information about aquafaba: Did you know that aquafaba comes free in every can of chickpeas? And that when you buy a bag of dry chickpeas and boil them, you’re also making aquafaba? Why should you care? Because aquafaba (Latin for bean water) is a great egg and egg white substitute. Here’s another interesting (and charming) tidbit about aquafaba—its useful egg-substitute nature was discovered in December 2014 by French tenor Joël Roessel. That’s less than eleven years ago. Amazing. (I looked for a link to his music so you could listen to him sing while you cook but couldn’t find one. Je suis triste.)

Here's a nice short history of aquafaba with recipes from Plant Based Gal. And here’s an article by Yue He, Venkatesh Meda, Martin J.T. Reaney, and Rana Mustafa, in Science Direct, about why aquafaba works as “a vegan, gluten and cholesterol-free rheological additive in many food products including egg-free mayonnaise, meringues, mousse, whipped cream, ice cream, emulsified dressings, cocktails, and bakery products.”

You’ll find aquafaba in cans of any kind of legumes (or by cooking them yourself), but chickpeas rank supreme for replacing whipped egg whites. The liquid in one 15-ounce can of chickpeas should give you enough liquid for this recipe. Aquafaba keeps in the freezer for up to 4 months.

But doesn’t whipped aquafaba taste like a mouthful of beans? Nope, and that’s another amazing quality of aquafaba.

Now for the experiment.

Hypothesis: If aquafaba is a good substitute for egg whites in meringue cookies, then my family (and the neighbors) will love the meringues and never guess that I swapped bean water for eggs.

Method: Easy. Follow the recipe for Aquafaba Meringues.

Conclusion: It’s unanimous. Everyone thought the meringues were fantastic.

 

Eggless Meringue Cookies

Adapted from Jane Black’s recipe in The New York Times

Yield: about 40 cookies 

Ingredients

3/4 cup aquafaba, chilled  

1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

2/3 cup granulated sugar

2 teaspoons almond extract (we liked the cookies so much that we’re looking forward to trying other extracts and flavorings)

 

Directions

Heat oven to 250 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Pour aquafaba into a large mixing bowl (or the bowl of your stand mixer). Beat on high (using the whisk attachment if using stand mixer) until stiff peaks form, 10-15 minutes. Add cream of tartar and beat to incorporate. Add sugar, one heaping tablespoon at a time, and beat until mixture is glossy. Add extract and beat to incorporate.

Use a tablespoon to scoop mixture into mounds on the baking sheets. (The picture for this step was blurry). 

Put both sheets in the oven (on different racks if necessary, rotating them partway through baking). Bake for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, or until meringues are dry and firm to touch. Turn oven off and let meringues sit inside for 1 hour as oven cools.

Meringues will keep in an airtight container for 2 to 3 days.

When she’s not selling seashells by the North Carolina seashore from her shell shop, Maureen Nash is a crime-solving sleuth with a ghost pirate for a supernatural sidekick . . .

Maureen is still getting used to life on Ocracoke Island, learning how to play the “shell game” of her business—and ghost whispering with the spirit of Emrys Lloyd, the eighteenth-century Welsh pirate who haunts her shop, The Moon Shell. The spectral buccaneer has unburied a treasure hidden in the shop’s attic that turns out to be antique shell art stolen from Maureen’s late husband’s family years ago.

Victor “Shelly” Sullivan and his wife Lenrose visit the shop and specifically inquire about these rare items. Not only is it suspicious that this shell collector should arrive around the time Maureen found the art, but Emrys insists that Sullivan’s wife is an imposter because Lenrose is dead. A woman’s corpse the police have been unable to identify was discovered by the Fig Ladies, a group who formed an online fig appreciation society. They’re meeting on Ocracoke for the first time in person and count Lenrose among their number, so the woman can’t possibly be dead.

But Lenrose’s behavior doesn’t quite match the person the Fig Ladies interacted with online. Now, Maureen and Emrys—with assistance from the Fig Ladies—must prove the real Lenrose is dead and unmask her mysterious pretender before a desperate murderer strikes again . . . 

Writing as Margaret Welch

The Boston Globe says Molly MacRae writes “murder with a dose of drollery.” She’s the author of the award-winning, national bestselling Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries and the Highland Bookshop Mysteries. As Margaret Welch, she writes books for Annie’s Fiction. Her short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and she’s a winner of the Sherwood Anderson Award for Short Fiction. Visit Molly on Facebook and Pinterest and connect with her on Instagram or Bluesky.