WIND-WHIPPED SWEETS

Bite into a cloud… Puffy, sweet, whipped by the wind and full of air, meringues deliver amazing light straight to your tongue.

Made of egg whites and sugar, whipped to form stiff peaks, meringues are baked to dry them out until they are crisp -- sometimes crispy through and through, sometimes with soft chewy centers.

There are French, Swiss, and Italian versions of meringue confections. Meringues can be formed into cookies, billowing crowns for pies and cakes, île flottante,  oeufs à la neige, Eton mess, macarons, pavlovas, dacquoise, vacherin, and other sweet airy desserts.

Meringues are often flavoured -- sometimes with vanilla, almond, or coconut, sometimes swirled with raspberry or chocolate.

Meringue-topped pies and desserts, like Baked Alaska, are torched to lightly caramelize the surface to deliver deep flavor notes. Adding even more amazing light, Baked Alaskas are usually set ablaze for a fiery presentation.

If you are vegan, try the vegan meringue, made using aquafaba.

Meringue may be used for embellishment. It can be formed into whimsical shapes, such as mushrooms, or piped into a crisp basket to hold cake, fruit, or flowers, like this gorgeous vacherin meringue encasement & lid with candied lilacs, filled with ice cream & strawberries.

Poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist Maya Angelou, who was also famous for her cooking skills, lauded the virtues of lemon meringue pie in her book, “Hallelujah! The Welcome Table: A Lifetime of Memories with Recipes.”

In the introduction to the very first recipe of the book, Angelou writes: "My grandmother, who my brother, Bailey, and I called Momma, baked lemon meringue pie that was unimaginably good. My brother and I waited for the pie. We yearned for it, longed for it. Bailey even hinted and dropped slightly veiled suggestions about it, but none of his intimations hastened its arrival."

We also love this quote by Angelou: "You may be given a load of sour lemons, so why not try to make a dozen lemon meringue pies."

Check out Angelou’s Lemon Meringue Pie recipe in her book or get an updated version of it by Giverny Tattersfield, here on her blog: Respectability and Riot.

Pavlova is another favorite meringue-based dessert named after the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova. Crackling crisp on the outside, soft and light on the inside, it forms a cloud-like pillow, topped with another puffy cloud of whipped cream, embellished with soft fresh fruits.

Keith Money, a biographer of Anna Pavlova, wrote that a hotel chef in Wellington, New Zealand, created the dish when Pavlova visited there in 1926 on her world tour.

Professor Emeritus Helen Leach, a culinary anthropologist at the University of Otago, in New Zealand, has compiled a library of cookbooks containing 667 pavlova recipes from more than 300 sources. Check out her book, “The Pavlova Story: A Slice of New Zealand's Culinary History.”

See more amazing light desserts in our posts Beautiful New Feather-Light Delights and New Tastes as Light as Clouds.

Read more about Windy Beauty all this week on BeautifulNow, including 10 Beautiful Places to Catch the Wind Now, 10 Most Beautiful Places to Fly a Kite, and The Beauty of Bluster & Breeze and The Wind Beneath Your Wings is Here, The Wind As Artist Now. And check out more beautiful things happening now in BN Wellness, Impact, Nature/Science, Food, Arts/Design, and Travel, Daily Fix posts.

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IMAGE CREDITS:

1. Image: by Distopiandreamgirl. “Red Currant Pavlovas.”
2. Image: by Distopiandreamgirl. “Mother's Day Vacherin.”
3. Image: by Alpha. “Lemon Meringue Tart.”
4. Image: by Ralph Daily. “Swirls.” Lemon Meringue Tart at Chez Fonfon.
5. Image: by Si King & Dave Myers. “Lychee and Ginger Pavlova.” From “The Hairy Bikers' Asian Adventure.” Courtesy of Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd/ Orion Publishing Group.
6. Image: by Marco Verch. “Mini Pavlova.”
7. Image: by bionicgrrrl. “Raspberry Pavlova.”
8. Image: by Angelina Koh. “Kaya Macarons.”
9. Image: by jensteele. “Lemon Meringue Cake.”
10. Image: by Timo Wolf. “Strawberry Meringue.”
11. Image: by Danny Chapman. “Chocolate Meringue Thingies.”
12. Image: by James Laing. “Meringue.”