Basic French meringue recipe

Meringue is my default go-to pud because on the zero-effort/maximum-impact scale, it measures a perfect 10. And there is none easier than French meringue.

No, it’s not called French meringue to make it sound extra fancy, it’s called French meringue to distinguish it from two other types of meringue: Swiss meringue and Italian meringue. French meringue is by far the easiest to make as it basically involves whisking egg whites with sugar and then baking it. So simple, Merlot can do it. Swiss meringue is one step up (and beyond Merlot) as it involves whisking the eggs and sugar over indirect heat until the sugar is melted and then completing the whipping off the heat. Italian meringue takes it further and involves boiling a sugar syrup and then whisking it into egg whites. The end result for each of these methods differs, so they are used for different things.

For the uncertain cook, the place to start flexing your meringue muscle is definitely the French one. My gran always used to add some cream of tartar to her egg and sugar mix, so that’s how I still make mine. An acid like a touch of vinegar, lemon or cream of tartar helps to stabilise the meringue. Some folks also add a spoon of corn flour.

French meringue is great for individual small biscuits that you pop in your mouth just like that, or sandwich together with some melted chocolate or cream. It’s also suitable to make that Aussie classic, Pavlova, which is a large meringue filled with cream and fruit of your choice. Follow a few basic rules and it’s not possible to get French meringue wrong:

1) Egg whites loathe fat the way I loathe the taxman. So make sure your bowl and whisk are scrupulously clean with not a smidge of fat or oil.

2) While we’re on the fat or oil subject, use a glass, ceramic or steel bowl not a plastic one. It’s way easier for microscopic bits of pesky fat to hide in plastic.

3) If you get any yellow in the white, start again dahling. We all break yolks from time to time, so separate your eggs in a separate small ramekin before adding it to your bigger bowl. That way one slip doesn’t mean chucking the lot.

4) For better whisking results, use room temperature eggs.

5) Do not make your oven too hot. If you do, your meringues will go brown. Low and slow is good. Think of them more as drying out rather than baking. No matter how proud you may be of your oven’s fancy thermo fan abilities, don’t go there. All that moving air over what is essentially eggy foam is bad news.

6) French meringue and humidity are not great mates, so if it’s very rainy or you live in the tropics where the average daily humidity is 110%, it may just spell trouble. Wait for a sunny day or move to Spain.