Mojito Meringue Kisses with Sugar And Crumbs*

As I mentioned in my last post, I recently received some icing sugars from Sugar and Crumbs to review: Coconut icing sugar, Cherry Bakewell icing sugar and Cherry Chocolate cocoa powder. I love the idea of naturally flavoured icing sugars that make life easier and baking faster. The fact that it's a UK company is great as they're local and it's supporting our own economy etc.. I first came across Sugar and Crumbs at the Cake and Bake show in Manchester last year but couldn't buy any as I didn't think halls of residence were the best place to try them out! Last month I noticed on Twitter that people were mentioning blogger packs from Sugar and Crumbs so I cheekily emailed them to see if I could trial their products - this month it was confirmed that I would receive some packs. I was eager to open the parcel when it arrived and was then engulfed in a cloud of sugar! Unfortunately some of the icing sugar appears to have escaped the factory. I don't think it was the packets as they were enclosed but it didn't taste of much and nor did the coconut icing sugar so maybe it was that pack! However, I have ordered from their website before and everything arrived in perfect condition so I think this was just a one off. The packaging is light pink with a little see through cupcake on it and it's very cute. The cost is £2.99 for 250g of icing sugar or 125g cocoa powder and goes up from there. It's not the cheapest of icing sugars but it does taste good and saves you time plus, with the cocoa powder especially, you don't need too much and could always use half flavoured and half plain for the icing sugar if you wanted to make it last longer.

I have a confession to make. I don't really like coconut. So I was concerned when one of my packs was coconut flavoured sugar! When I rang mum she said coconut and lime went well together, so I did some googling and came up with mojito meringues. Aha! The theme I was given was Mother's Day and as mum left the other week, she said how nice it was that she now had a grown-up daughter to drink cocktails with. My decision was made. I would make mojito inspired mini meringues. I also found that the flavour wasn't very strong, I don't think you'd say the meringues had coconut in them unless you knew.

I looked a few different recipes but based my calculations off The Meringue Girls' view that the amount of sugar should be double the weight of the egg whites. However, I think there needs to be 20g extra caster sugar to compensate for the lime juice slackening the mixture. If you don't want to do this combination of flavours then you could try others, I haven't managed to do anything with the cherry bakewell icing sugar but you could use that with a few teaspoons of amaretto to add the token alcohol (use some of the leftover bottle from my Chocolate Tart) and leave out the lime. The reason it's only a token amount of alcohol is because you need to keep the raw meringue mix thick enough to pipe and stay shaped for cooking.

Mojito Kisses Recipe

Oven at 200˚c

Makes about 3 trays worth - cover the trays with baking paper before you start

You need a piping bag

Ingredients

3 egg whites (refrigerate or freeze the yolks, beaten with a pinch of salt to make i dunderi another day)

Caster sugar to weight of egg whites plus 20g

Coconut icing sugar from Sugar and Crumbs, again to weight of egg whites

Juice and zest of 1 lime

2tsp rum

Method

Place the caster sugar in a small tray or baking tin and put in the preheated oven for 10 minutes, so the edges just start to darken and the sugar is hot - be careful not to touch it directly.

Once the sugar has heated though and is out of the oven, turn the oven down to 100˚c (leave the oven door open to a few minutes to speed things up).

Whilst the sugar is heating up, start beating the egg whites on high speed in a metal or glass bowl, which has had lime juice wiped over it and the whisk to get rid of any fat.

Beat the egg whites until they form stiff peaks and then add the hot sugar one tablespoon at a time, mixing all the while.

Once all of the caster sugar is incorporated, add the lime juice, zest and rum.

Stop using the mixer and fold in the icing sugar with a metal, a third at a time. Stop as soon as it's all combined.

If you'd like to have stripes on the meringues then you need to paint vertical lines of green gel food colouring onto the inside of the piping bag before filling it with the mixture and then snipping off the end of the bag so you can pipe tear drop shaped meringues onto the trays.

Cook in the oven for 40-45 minutes until the meringues come off the baking paper easily and without mess.

Leave on the paper to cool (in the switched off oven if you have space).

Enjoy the deliciously fizzy kisses!

Stiff peaks