Red Kidney Bean Aquafaba Meringues

My dad was, and probably still is, the very opposite of wasteful. He had a bucket in the shower to collect the cold water before you got in, and used it later for flushing the toilet. He'd put on more clothes, rather than turning on the heater. Food scraps would be eaten where possible, or else taken out to compost.

It pains me just as much to throw food away, which is why I have experimented with eating carrot tops, and cooking with sourdough starter which no longer smelt right. The other night, I made a chili using tinned red kidney beans, and suddenly recalled reading about a recent discovery involving the bean liquid: named aquafaba, it turns out the thick and frothy brine can be whipped up just like egg whites!

While chickpea water has the most neutral flavour, I decided to try making meringues with the red kidney bean liquid I had on hand. What started out as a reddish-brown gloop became paler as it aerated in the food processor.

Red kidney bean liquid before whipping.

The original recipe from Goose Wohlt only calls for 1/2 cup sugar and the liquid from one can of beans, but I didn't seem to be able to get the ingredients to form stiff peaks, so I added cream of tartar and vanilla as well, based on the recipe from Kids with Food Allergies. It took me half an hour to realise I had left the food processor blades in, before switching to the whisk attachment.

Mixture became pale and thick after whipping.

Using the egg whisk gave a much fluffier result, but I still couldn't get the mixture to form stiff peaks, and my food processor was getting hot. I went ahead and spooned the whipped concoction onto baking paper and put it in the oven anyway.

Any peaks disappeared quickly.

Depending on which recipe you pick, you are supposed to bake the meringues at 100C/200F for 1.5 hours, 120C/250F for 40 minutes, or use a mix of temperatures. I baked mine at 100C for 1 hour, then turned off the oven and left them inside overnight.

Baking the aquafaba meringues.

Because I didn't put my meringues into an airtight container in a timely manner, I baked them again the next day to dry them out properly. You need to wait for them to cool first, not just to avoid the moisture being trapped in the storage box, but also because they are soft and sticky while warm—I tried pulling one off the baking paper straight away and the bottom stuck, but those which I removed after cooling slid off effortlessly.

Aquafaba meringue stuck to baking paper while warm.

I'm not sure why the surface of my meringues seemed to have little circles on them, but the result was light and crunchy. Overall, I think they were actually closer to hokey pokey than meringues, because they stuck to your teeth when you ate them, and there seemed to be a bit of malt or caramel flavour.

The aquafaba meringues were light and crunchy.

Breaking the crunchy bits over fresh strawberries and coconut yoghurt greatly reduced the teeth-sticking, and made a tasty vegan and gluten free dessert.

Aquafaba meringues with strawberries and coconut yoghurt.

Apparently, aquafaba can be used to make a variety of different (vegan) dishes, such as:

• chocolate mousse
• strawberry ice cream
• genoise or sponge cake with aquafaba icing
• mayonnaise
• butter
• and even mozzarella cheese!

You can also use it as an egg substitute (including as egg wash) by replacing each egg in many recipes with 3 Tbsp aquafaba.

I was pleased with how my meringues turned out, and amazed by their transformation from a slimy liquid into light and crunchy pillows. I would be tempted to retry these with chickpea brine, and see how aquafaba works in savoury recipes as well. No more tipping bean liquid down the drain—my dad would be pleased!

This post is part of Our Growing Edge, a monthly blogging event aimed at inspiring us to try new things. This month, it is hosted by Jazzmine from Dash of Jazz, with a theme of Nostalgia.

Favourite Recipes: Christmas Caramel Crunch

I know, I know, I've been sharing a lot of recipes lately, and it's really about time for a restaurant review or something. But when a workmate brought these crunchy chocolate caramel slices in, and I found out how easy these moreish mouthfuls were to make, I decided they would be perfect to include as part of the Sweet New Zealand monthly blogging event.

Caramel crunch with a variety of toppings.

The last time I wrote a post intended for the event (I was too late with the entry), I made chocolate cheese fudge. It turns out a savoury component works a treat in desserts. In the case of this caramel crunch recipe, the secret ingredient is... wait for it... Salada crackers!

Not surprisingly, I've seen this addictive invention labelled Christmas crack. I prefer to watch people's reaction to these little bites before they know what is in them, so I avoid using names that give the game away, like soda cracker chocolate candy, salty caramel and chocolate crackers, or saltine cracker brickle. Instead, I'll call them caramel crunch bars, chocolate toffee bark or salted toffee chocolate squares.

There are any number of variations, not just in the name, but also in the toppings. You can add nuts, dried fruit, flaky sea salt, or more sweet and/or crispy things, like broken pretzels, hundreds and thousands, chopped M&Ms or mini marshmallows. They are also great with no toppings at all, as in David Lebovitz's Chocolate-Covered Caramelized Matzoh Crunch. As it's coming up to Christmas though, a white chocolate, pistachio and cranberry version seemed most appropriate. You could also try cutting these into triangles to make them more tree-like.

Christmas Caramel Crunch
Recipe similar to another one which appeared in Dish Magazine (Dec 2010/Jan 2011).

1/2 packet of Salada crackers (1 sleeve, 9 large squares, 36 small squares, or 125g)
250g butter
1 cup brown sugar
300g white chocolate buttons
1/2 cup chopped pistachios
1/2 cup dried cranberries

Method

1. Line a sponge roll tin with baking paper and place a single layer of Salada crackers in the bottom of the tin.
2. In a saucepan, heat butter and sugar over medium heat and bring to a boil for 3 minutes. Pour over crackers.
3. Bake at 180°C for 8 to 10 minutes.
4. Remove from oven and sprinkle chocolate over the crackers as soon as pan comes out of the oven. Allow to melt (around 5 minutes), then evenly spread the chocolate with a knife. Sprinkle the pistachios and cranberries over the melted chocolate.
5. Allow to cool and then break into pieces.

What is a sponge roll tin?

It is a rimmed baking sheet. If you don't have one, and end up using a rectangular cake tin as I did, you'll only be able to fit two-thirds of the crackers in, so you'll need to adjust the other ingredients accordingly.

I only had a rectangular cake tin, which wasn't able to hold all the crackers.

Can I use other kinds of chocolate?

You can use compound milk chocolate instead of white chocolate, or even dark chocolate buttons, but I would advise against bittersweet chocolate with 65% cocoa or higher. You want the caramel flavour to shine in these toffee pieces, and a strong chocolate taste would overwhelm this. I also noticed that white chocolate seemed to have a lower volume than its browner counterpart, so you would need less of the milk chocolate in weight, say only 200-250g.

Caramel poured on, and baked, then chocolate buttons melted over the top.

How long do I need to cool this for after adding the toppings?

It can take 2 to 3 hours for this to cool completely at room temperature, so that the chocolate fully sets. You can also also put this into the refrigerator to make it properly brittle before chopping.

Crispy Christmas caramels.

[Added 20 December 2013: If you want to jazz it up a bit, take a look at the latest caramel chocolate crackers from Dish, which adds booze the caramel.]

This post is part of Sweet New Zealand, a monthly blogging event for New Zealand bloggers to share something sweet. This month it is hosted by Mairi from Toast.

Wacky Wonders (or, Chocolate Cheese Fudge? For Real?)

Things have been more than a bit hectic over here. We've just moved into our new house, one of our cats is sick (and needs to be coaxed into eating her foul-tasting pills twice a day), and work is in overdrive, with plenty of long hours including a sleep at work one evening. We've been cooking and eating out as much as ever; I just haven't found the time to blog about things, until I've waited so long that I've lost the inspiration. If you are interested, you can see a more timely update of what we've been up to on my Facebook page.

Poaching free range chicken breast for the sick animal.

Along with our new house comes the new experience of cooking with gas. It's amazing how quickly the stovetop heats things up, but frustratingly, it seems to be pretty difficult to cook at a low temperature, even when we place a spacer underneath the pot. When we tried to slow-cook beef bones and salmon frames into palatable jellies for the cat, we couldn't get the stock to simmer; it was at a furious boil for hours. When we made chili con carne using the unseasoned boiled mince the cat rejected, we managed to burn food on the sides of the pot. And the oven is so well insulated that it not only comes to temperature in a matter of minutes, we can barely smell whatever it is that is being baked. It takes some getting used to, our new kitchen, but it is an improvement on the one at our old flat.

The secret to a delicious chili, we've decided, is the addition of a bit of cocoa powder and a rich, flavourful sugar. We used malt syrup this time, but molasses sugar is also great, and other people add a square of chocolate instead. We also managed to use up the jar of pickled jalapeños that has been sitting in our fridge (a small triumph—the pickled cucumbers left over from our burger making experiments are next in the firing line).

Which brings us to what we tried making after that (hint: the title of this post gives the game away already). Now, I've seen some pretty wacky ingredients in my time. For vegans, I have produced a chocolate mousse tart using tofu, and a buttercream frosting made of avocados, the green colour of which makes me think it really ought to taste like mint, especially if you are pairing it with chocolate cake. Both of the above tasted of their respective ingredients, mainly because I couldn't bring myself to add as much sugar as it would take to drown the flavours out. Bean brownies are not so odd, if you are used to Asian bean-based desserts, and I am all geared up to try pizza with a cauliflower crust. I can understand why you might use unusual ingredients if you have dietary restrictions, but when I came across chocolate cheese fudge, I was astounded.

Chocolate cheese fudge.

I know people use cheese in desserts. In fact, I love cheesecake in many different forms. But we are not talking about cream cheese here. We are not even talking ricotta or mascarpone. What the recipe calls for is processed cheese, which you can't even buy in blocks anymore in New Zealand! Fortunately, we had some individually wrapped slices in the fridge, again left over from making hamburgers. Unfortunately, we only had one plain slice; the rest were smoked (or rather, smoke-flavoured). Seeing as putting cheese into fudge sounded ridiculous anyway, we ploughed on ahead.

Melting together the processed cheese with butter.

As you might expect, the processed cheese was rubbery and didn't really want to mix with the melted butter. But although it seemed like far too much icing sugar for the amount of yellow goo, the resultant crumbly mixture compressed into an oily Play-Doh-like clump, which set in the refrigerator into a smooth, firm block of fudge.

Mixing the cheese into cocoa and icing suagr.

Unsuspecting tasters thought the fudge was delicious, but commented it was saltier than usual, like salted butter caramels. On being told it contained processed cheese though, the reaction was generally one of disgust. And the smokey flavour is obvious once you know about it. When I shared a post about cross-cultural food preferences last week, a friend who opened a Western restaurant in China commented that his customers loved fruit pizza (yes, with cheese, and lashings of chocolate sauce!), although they would often eat around the cheese on the purely savoury pizzas. Who's to say what's weird, as long as it tastes good? What unusual recipes have you come across?

This post is part of Our Growing Edge, a monthly blogging event aimed at inspiring us to try new things. This month it is hosted by Marnelli from Sweets and Brains.