Experiment #4: Vegan Meringue

I've been lusting for vegan meringue for some time now and found a simple recipe from the vegan r.d. that works just great. It's made of ingredients most vegan cooks already have lying around except for the agar agar. My local natural food store sells it in bulk which is your best bet since you only need a tiny bit. I've seen small packages of it at other stores for 8 bucks or more, but you can get what you need for this recipe for well less than a buck if you buy from the bulk section.

Agar agar powder (or flakes) is a vegan substitute for gelatin. You'll need to dissolve it in water or other liquid first and heat it before use. I used agar agar in place of gelatin to make sugar paste, and it worked well. Just be careful using it in recipes that call for gelatin since you need a lot less of agar agar to do the job, approximately 1/4th.

Now, on to the vegan meringue:

1 1/3 t agar agar powder mixed with 1/3 cup water
1/2 cup Ener-G Egg Replacer
3/4 cup cold water
1/2 cup sugar
4 t vanilla extract
1/2 t lemon extract (I used lemon juice.)

Mix the agar agar and water in a small saucepan, stir, and let stand approximately 5 minutes. Stir on medium heat until the mixture simmers and bubbles around the edges. Stop stirring and simmer 1 minute.

Beat the egg replacer and water to soft peaks (foamy and slightly firm) in your KitchenAid or hand mixer. (I LOVE my KitchenAid!!!) Beat in the sugar, vanilla, and lemon. Then pour in the agar agar mixture and whip to medium peaks (glossy and almost as firm as regular meringue). This took me about 3 minutes. Refrigerate for 10 minutes then whip again. I was able to get firm peaks this second time around. In other words, to the naked eye, this meringue should look identical to regular meringue.

Now here's where my experiment got messy. I tried to continue whipping the meringue as I added Earth Balance to make meringue buttercream, but the meringue instantly deflated. I'll stick with regular buttercream from now on, but there are 2 other experiments I want to try with this meringue:

1. Fold it into cake batter to make a genoise cake. Hopefully I don't end up with a solid brick with that experiment.

2. Top a pie with it and brown the meringue peaks under my broiler.

So, from this experiment I learned:
1. This vegan meringue wants to be a vegan meringue, not meringue buttercream.
2. I noticed a few sugar granules in the finished meringue. Next time, I'll experiment with cooking the sugar with the agar agar mixture to make sure it dissolves completely.