Pig Meringues

Ready for the oven

Atticus loves the electric whisk. He always tells me when he uses it that he doesn’t need help with it. I guess this is true as he has been using it for half of his four years. However, we do often end up with whisked egg or cake batter all over the surfaces or up the walls. Despite the sheer volume of clearing up that cooking with the kids creates, we will definitely have some colourful and memorable stories to keep us in our old age! Also, at least I know where the mess is. There is no secret mess in this house, the vast majority of it is confined to the kitchen! Yes the kids have untidy bedrooms, but that is mainly toys and books on the floor and generally isn’t too gruesome to clear up. May I add here, I am not looking forward to teenagers who eat snacks all over the house and generally leave a trail of crumbs in their wake…

Escaping pigs!

I classify meringues in the comfort food category. A relatively guilt-free pudding in my head. Atticus seems to have inherited my enthusiasm for making meringues and when I mentioned to him that I had a plan to make a batch of Pink Pig Meringues and put Marks & Spencer’s Vegetarian Percy Pigs on them and Vegetarian Phizzy Pig Tails on them he was immediately ready to make them. I thought they might appeal to my kids’ love of fun and character bakes and unsurprisingly I was right!

Ingredients

Makes 8 large meringues (approx. 8cm diameter) of 16 small meringues (approx. 4cm diameter)

  • 4 large egg whites
  • 115g caster sugar
  • 115g icing sugar
  • 1/2tsp rosewater
  • Drop or 2 of pink food dye (we use Wilton Gels)
  • 50g of white chocolate, melted
  • Percy Pigs (we used Vegetarian ones)
  • Phizzy Tails (we used Vegetarian ones)

Method

  1. Heat the oven to 100°c fan.  Draw around a cup or another template for each meringue on a piece of parchment. We used one of the kids’ cups. We also tend to spray the parchment with frylight to prevent sticking. Make sure they are well spaced out. Some of ours were too close to each other!
  2. In a clean and dry bowl, whisk the egg whites with an electric hand whisk on medium until stiff peaks form.
  3. Increase the speed of the whisk and alternate between adding 1 tbsp of caster and icing sugar until they are fully added.
  4. Add the rosewater and food colouring and mix gently to distribute evenly.
  5.  Put dollops of the mixture on the parchment in each circle.
  6. Place in the oven for 90 minutes for large meringues and just over 60 for smaller ones. We tend to make meringues at the end of the day and I switch the oven off and completely ignore them until the morning. This means I don’t risk opening the oven too early and ruining all our hard work.
  7. Once the meringues are fully cooled, melt the chocolate. I did this in short bursts at a low heat in the microwave.
  8. Spread a bit of melted chocolate on the back of a Percy Pig Sweet and stick it on to the front of the pink meringue. I suggest trying to stick to flatter parts of the meringue if at all possible!
  9. Spread a bit of melted chocolate on the back of a Phizzy Pig Tail Sweet and stick it on the back of the pig.
  10. Repeat steps 8 and 9 until all the meringues have heads and tails.
  11. Leave the chocolate to set and then enjoy the pigs!
Their smiling faces looking up at me, just makes me want to smile!

The kids and I loved these fancy meringues. Ophelia was delighted that we had made a pink treat (she can be such a girly girl at times!) and they all loved the fact that they had sweets on them! Simon happily worked his way through the rest of the Phizzy Tails Sweets in my absence. I am not sure if I have forgiven him for that yet! I don’t buy vegetarian sweets often!

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