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.

Experiment #3: Natural Food Coloring

In Experiment #2, I learned to use turmeric to add a yellow hue to vegan lemon curd. Well, I made a cake and wanted to add a few flowers with leaves to the top. I was looking around my pantry and found a couple more items to experiment with. Yay! After whipping up a fresh batch of vegan cream cheese frosting, I frosted a cake and reserved a bit for the color experiment.

First, the flowers. I sprinkled a pinch of paprika at a time into about a half cup of the reserved frosting. After each addition of paprika, I tasted the frosting to make sure the flavor didn't change, and I kept adding paprika until I got to a rosey hue I was satisfied with.

Next, I did the same with the rest of the reserved frosting, this time using spirulina powder to turn it green for the leaves. Spirulina is a salt water algae and vegan friendly. The powder didn't alter the flavor, but I accidentally poured too much in at once, turning the frosting a dark gray, almost black. I had extra frosting to try again, and I got a greenish color I was happy with. In both cases, though, you can see teeny tiny specks of the powder in the frosting if you look closely. The specks are so tiny, they don't bother me at all.

As you can see in the picture, the paprika and spirulina powder don't make for the bright, vibrant colors you see on cakes at the grocery store, but the colors look more natural, and I just think it's rad to "repurpose" items you already have in the pantry. Next time I use berries for baking, I'll reserve the juice for more color experiments. I'll also try beet powder if I can find it in small enough quantities since it's kind of pricey.