How to make Meringues to decorate your cakes!

Recently there is a trend for unicorn cakes, drip cakes and number cakes and the one thing these all have in common is how perfect they look finished off with little meringues.

Meringues are a great way to add colour and a different texture to your cakes rather than just buttercream, and the best thing is they are so easy to make with just two ingredients. So in this weeks video tutorial I am going to show you how I make my meringue kisses and swirled rosettes, and also different ways you can colour them.

The meringues that I make in this video are French meringues and are made by whisking egg whites until light and fluffy with nice peaks, and adding in caster sugar at a ration of 2:1. So for 100g of egg whites you need 200g of caster sugar. This is combined with the egg whites slowly until the granules of sugar have all dissolved to give a thick, silky, smooth mixture. You can then add flavours and colours to your mixture before you pipe them into your desired shapes. Gel colours work best as their colour is more concentrated and they add less wet ingredients to your mixture.

If you are finding that your mixture is just isn’t thickening once you add your sugar it may be because your egg whites were not whisked enough at the start. Your meringues will also work best when your egg whites are at room temperature. If your eggs are too cold you can pop them in a bowl of warm water for a few minutes to warm up before separating them.

I then bake these at 100°C for between 45 minutes – 1 Hour depending on the size of your meringues. If you were to bake something a little larger like meringues nest you may want to back them for a little longer. You are looking for a nice crunchy shell with a soft center. By keeping your oven low your meringues will retain their white colour, else they can have a slightly ivory tinge. Once the meringues are ready turn the oven off and let them cool before removing them. They are then ready to add to your cake creations.

Here is a an example of a cake with my meringues added. I love how it looks with the different varieties of styles. I added these to a 6 inch cake covered in this light pink buttercream with a few sprinkles on one side and a white royal icing drip on the other. I think my husband summed up this cake perfectly when he called it a ‘styled mess’.

I really hope you find this weeks tutorial / recipe useful and if you haven’t make meringues before will enjoy adding them to your cakes.