In my head any excuse to cook and practise my philosophy of altruistic baking and sharing the calories around is good. It means I get to have fun in the whole cake or treat-making process, but also that I don’t have to battle the temptation to eat the whole cake or batch I made in one sitting and making myself poorly as a result. It also lets me spend quality time with the children and sometimes even one-on-one which I value.
This week I decided that I would test my patience and see if I could make Meringue Lollipops and actually manage to leave the oven door closed until the oven if fully cooled so that they don’t collapse. It was touch and go to see if my patience would hold out and I am happy to report that on this occasion I rose to the challenge.
This is our second attempt at this recipe. For the first attempt, we made them way too big and I also used half caster sugar and half icing sugar. They were beautifully squishy inside and had a very marshmallowy, lollypop-like sugary taste. In essence, they were yummy, but they didn’t have great structural integrity and only about 5 of a double batch worked out. This time round I learnt from my previous experience: smaller lollipops and only caster sugar!
Ingredients
Makes 10 lollipops
- 2 egg whites
- 125g caster sugar
- 1/2tsp cornflour
- 1/2tsp white wine vinegar
- 1/2tsp vanilla extract
- Sprinkles
- Wooden/paper lollypop sticks
Method
- Measure 2 pieces of greaseproof paper to go on your 2 baking sheets. Draw around a 6cm diameter circular object 10 times on greaseproof paper, 5 on each leaving enough space for the lollypop sticks.
- Grease the baking sheets (we used frylight) put the greaseproof paper on them with the pen circles facing down so they don’t come off on your meringues. Spray the top with frylight.
- Separate the eggs and put in a large glass bowl. (I separated the eggs as we don’t have an egg separator and it is vital that no yolk ends up in the egg whites.)
- Whisk with an electric whisk in a clean and dry glass bowl until stiff peaks form.
- Add the sugar a tbsp at a time until all added and whisk between each addition.
- Add the cornflour, white wine vinegar and the vanilla and whisk again.
- Using 2 spoons, place dollops of the meringue mixture into the circles on the greaseproof paper and then shape with the back of the spoon.
- Carefully slide the lollypop sticks into the meringues and make sure it is in securely. I put a tiny bit extra of meringue on top of where the stick went in to keep them secure.
- Add sprinkes.
- Place in the oven at 110ºc for one hour and then reduce the temperature to 90ºc for a further hour- 90 minutes. Leave in the oven overnight to cool completely if you can resist the temptation to have a little look! You need to at least leave the oven door closed until it has fully cooled. I cooked ours for a further 90 minutes after the initial hour to ensure they wouldn’t fall off the lollipop sticks. This gave them a less marshmallowy texture, but they did stay on the sticks, not collapse and the kids still demolished them without hesitation.
Lollipops-what a great idea! Looks like we will be making some tomorrow…yum!
Thank you! They were definitely lots of fun. I was popular with my kids when these were around and they enjoyed making them.
Like!! Really appreciate you sharing this blog post.Really thank you! Keep writing.
Thank you so much.