I had some egg whites in the fridge that needed to be used up. Normally I'd make a pavlova with surplus egg whites. But the next pav recipe that I had queued up called for mango and passionfruit, neither of which I had on hand. So I flipped through the book for other egg white recipes and hit upon these simple almond meringues.

The procedure is very simple. You just make your French meringue as usual. And then stir in a generous quantity of toasted chopped almonds. Actually, the recipe called for "very finely chopped" almonds. So, given that, I just opted for ground almonds instead. Since I had a big bag of almond flour tucked away in the freezer already. The texture is slightly different. But I figured it would be close enough and certainly saved me a lot of chopping. So, definitely a worthwhile substitution, in my opinion.

Toasted Almond Meringues

Slightly adapted from Dessert of the Day by Kim Laidlaw

Ingredients

• 4 large egg whites
• 1/2 tsp. cream of tartar
• 1 c. sugar
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 c. ground (or very finely chopped) almonds, toasted

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 150°C (300°F) and line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.
2. If almonds are not already toasted, put them in the oven for ~10 minutes, stirring once or twice, to toast them.
3. Warm the egg whites very gently in a warm water bath. (Put the egg whites in a small bowl and place that bowl in a larger bowl of warm water.)
4. Beat the egg whites until frothy.
5. Add the cream of tartar and continue to beat.
6. Once a light foam forms, begin adding sugar ~1 Tbsp. at a time.
7. Continue beating until all sugar has been added and meringue is very stiff.
8. Beat in the vanilla.
9. Quickly and carefully fold in the almonds¹.
10. Spoon dollops of meringue² onto the prepared baking sheets.
11. Bake at 150°C (300°F) for ~20 minutes.
12. Turn oven off and allow to stand in hot oven for at least an hour or two.

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¹ The fat from the almonds will destabilize the meringue and cause it to begin collapsing. This is why it's important to get the almonds mixed in with the minimum amount of agitation. The more you stir it, the more volume your meringue will lose. ^Back
2 The original recipe called for "heaping teaspoons" of meringue. I decided that I wanted a smaller number of larger meringues, so I did heaping tablepoons for mine. And the 20-minute bake time still seemed to be ample. So I'm happy with how that worked out overall. ^Back