Mario Mushroom Meringues
It’s-a-me
Ingredients:
80ml Aquafaba
140g sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
1/8 tsp xanthan gum
2 tsp vanilla extract
green food colouring
Method
Pour your aquafaba into a bowl, and with a hand whisk, or an electric whisk, whip it until you get soft peaks. It will turn white and fluffy and the whisk should leave a trail for a few seconds when its moved through the mix.
Add your sugar in, it’s best to do this gradually, whisking between each addition, so the sugar mixes through completely. Add in your cream of tartar and xanthan gum- they help to keep the structure of the meringue by adding acid to the mix and agitating the proteins (cream of tartar) and holding the water together like a jelly (think egg whites).
Add the vanilla extract. If you feel the mix has gone a little brown/yellow from the vanilla, add a tiny TINY (honestly, tiny) amount of purple food colouring to offset the yellow. It’s not too important though.
Take 1-2 baking trays and line them with parchment paper. Pipe your mix onto the paper in the following way.
Mushroom Tops:
Take 3/4 of the mix and dye it bright green. Spoon this into a piping bag with a 1cm round nozzle (no. 2A nozzle). Pipe 1” round domes that are 1/2” high. Pat down spikes with a slightly wet finger (the wetness stops it sticking). Pipe as many as you can.
Mushroom Stalks:
Take your white(ish) mix and spoon this into a piping bag with a small round nozzle (no. 10 nozzle). Pipe 1/2“ round circle, and build up a small cylindrical shape about 1cm high. Pat down spikes with a slightly wet finger. Pipe the same amount as the tops, make fun shapes with any leftover if you want.
Bake everything for 20 minutes at 250f (120c) and then turn the heat down to 200f (95c) for 40 minutes or until baked through.
They should peel away from the parchment easily, if they stick, or break, pop them back into the oven at 250f to finish off quickly.
Draw two black eyes onto the stalks by using an edible food marker, or making some black royal icing.
Royal Icing:
Make royal icing by using 2-3 tbsp icing sugar with 1 tsp aquafaba mixed in, feel free to add some vanilla extract if you wish. You want it to look like a thick glue in texture. Spoon 1/2 tsp on the top of the stalk, place the Top… on top.
For the eyes if you are using, take some mixture, dye it black with black food colouring, and pipe on using a piping bag with a small part of the end cut off.
You can also make the red mushrooms by dying the top red instead.
Eat and enjoy!
Special thanks to Kim Joy, who provided a vegan meringue recipe which this is based on, but slightly tweaked to fit my style.