Are you ready?
I mean are you really, really ready?
I’m am going to show you something that will blow your mind…knock your socks off…
Okay, sit down…honestly, sit down.
When you drain a can of chickpeas, you can put the liquid in your mixing bowl and whip it into this fantastic stuff – the most fluffy (vegan and gluten free!) stuff.
Crazy, right?
I read about it when I was researching vegan options for baking and I came across a few recipes that asked for chickpea liquid in place of eggs – this bean liquid is referred to as aquafaba.
Well, I googled aquafaba and saw that a french chef figured out that this would beat into a meringue like foam and you could treat it the same way (I would love to ask him what made him put chickpea liquid in a bowl and beat it!!).
So, I grabbed a can, drained it, whipped the liquid with some sugar and came up with this:
Imagine how excited that made me (because you all know it doesn’t take much to excite me!). This just opened up a whole bunch of options for vegan/gluten free baking.
Okay, so now you can get up from your chair (I’m done blowing your mind!), grab a can of beans from your pantry and get whippin’ !!!
Ingredients:
1 can ( 540 ml or 19 oz) chickpeas, drained, reserving the beans for another time (this is just hilarious to me because it’s usually the reverse!).
1/3 c sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp cream of tarter (optional, but keeps the meringue more stable if you are baking it)
1. Preheat your oven to 250 degrees and line your baking sheet with parchment or Silpat.
2. Drain the can right into your bowl; reserve the beans.
3. Whip it for about 7-10 minutes (it’s really important to keep whipping!!)
4. While it’s beating (when it’s almost done), gradually add in the sugar, then the cream of tartar and the vanilla.
5. If you did it right, it should look like this (above)
6. Now, you have so many options here (like slathering it on a tart shell filled with lovely caramelized fruit and then torching it like I showed you at the beginning of this post), but we are going to make simple meringues. so just dollop some (however big you would like) onto a baking sheet (like above) and bake for about 1 1/2 hours (bake longer if your cookies are bigger – the ones above baked for 2 hours, the ones below baked for 1 1/2).
7. Remove them from the oven, cool them and if you like, drizzle them with some melted dark chocolate…so yummy!
Just remember to store them in an airtight container (I didn’t and later that day, they were chewy like marshmallows…which didn’t stop me one bit from eating them!!)
8. Then you can sandwich them with some Nutella or some Cookie Butter (you know, we were so good being vegan and all, a little “bad” won’t do any harm!)
I know you are dying to try this. Start simple…just whip it up and be amazed. Then put it under the broiler.
Socks will be kncked off for sure!
