Aquafaba 101: Meringues and Pavlova

When people start playing around with aquafaba, oftentimes the first thing they make is meringues. My first thing was macarons. I finally got around to making meringues, and while I was at it, making flat meringue discs that I could use to assemble a Pavlova dessert. Source of this recipe: the Facebook group "Aquafaba (Vegan Meringue Hits and Misses!) Ingredients: 1/2 cup aquafaba (light-colored is preferable, for example from chickpeas, or Cannelini beans) 1 teaspoon vanilla 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar 3/4 cup granulated sugar I did not reduce this aquafaba, nor did I chill it first. What I used was straight out of the can at room temperature. Look for something with the thickness as the video shows, especially if you make your aquafaba homemade, in which case you may need to reduce yours. A note on temperature and aquafaba: aquafaba is very sensitive to high temperatures. The first time I tried this recipe, which said to bake them at 200F, it was a fail. The meringues melted into aquafaba soup. Come to find out after the 2 hours, that even though I set my oven to 200F, it started at that but ended up reading 225F, not 200F after 2 hours. The temperature creeps up slowly. This is why it's SO IMPORTANT to know your oven, and always have an oven thermometer in it. I compensated by reducing the temperature by 25F and they worked beautifully. Did I mention you have to know your oven? :-) Also - mine is not convection, just... a regular, standard oven. So I don't have the fan effect to contend with. You may have to do some trial and error with your oven if it's the convection type. If you want to color your meringues, either use thick gel paste coloring or powder. Regular food coloring from the grocery store is too thin. You could easily end up thinning your meringue too much to get enough color so you can see it, so it's also not going to work.The structure of whipped aquafaba is not as strong as that of egg whites, so if you thin it too much the air you've whipped into the aquafaba won't hold. The day after, your meringues may still feel sticky. Mine did. I let them sit in a ziplock-style bag for about a week and they ended up perfectly dry, and totally melt in my mouth. So the more they 'sit', the more time they have to dry, and the better they end up. If you don't need your oven, just let them sit in there for a few days. Delicious vegan sorcery at its best. :-)