I’m late to this vegan meringue game, compared to vegan bakers, but I think I’m still ahead of the game for, yknow, normal people. (I kid, I love you vegan bakers! Strangely I have three good friends and an ex who are vegan and love baking).
If you know someone allergic to eggs, or a vegan, or if you make hummus/use chickpeas ever, you should try making vegan meringues! This time I just went with normal meringue cookies, next time I might try pavlova or a pie. I’m so impressed by what the vegan baking community has done with “aquafaba”- the liquid leftover from a can of garbanzo beans/chickpeas/chana (as in chana masala the Indian dish, as I learned from wikipedia). Look at this crazy list of recipes on the facebook group. And there’s a website dedicated to aquafaba, with the history of it (basically it was a myth, and then someone did it but way too hard molecular gastronomy-style, and then finally someone was like wait you don’t have to do anything fancy).
It is pretty unbelievable how beaten chickpea liquid looks just like beaten egg whites, stiff peaks and all, with nothing added (I would expect agar or something). So let’s get to it!
It’s a garnanbo! A Zoganba! I meant a garnanza! (Or did I? Everything gets garbled sometimes… )
First, use your can to drain the liquid from the garbanzos. I used the beans in a crockpot on low with a jar of salsa, a beer, and a pack of chicken thighs all day. I added some zucchini about half an hour before we ate with tortillas, queso fresco, and spinach (didn’t have lettuce). Yum.
What if Andre Young is actually a robot series, and this is the 14th iteration of him? He’d be Dr. Dre N.
I realize I’m in the middle of a blog post and I baked these meringues tonight just so I could have a blog post out on Thursday but oh my gosh I just read a great tweet that you should know about.
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>I can't get over Euclid.</p>— Ric (@ellopickle) <a href=”https://twitter.com/ellopickle/status/644340277361049600″>September 17, 2015</a></blockquote>
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Anyways. Let’s all calm down. I laughed so hard at this my husband told me to go to sleep because I’m getting delirious. That should make a fun post!
Start beating that bean liquid! It takes approximately FOREEEEEVEEERRR by which I mean 10-15 minutes. We worked on our new hobby, PANDA magazine, during this time. (Brag: we’re in the magazine this issue, because we completed last month’s! It’s really hard! Great for DASH fans. Which should be everyone in the relevant cities. I’ve DASHed in Davis, San Francisco, Chicago, and will in Austin next year.)
How you bean lately? Oh, same old same old
How bout you, how you bean? Oh, things in my life are a little crazy. I feel like things are getting really mixed up.
Tell me about it. I’ve bean beaten again and again by life.
I thought you’ve bean sort of stiff lately
Bean there, done that is how I feel toward everything nowadays, you know?
Because I can’t read directions I dumped all my sugar and vanilla in at once.
But you shouldn’t do that! Add about a tablespoon at a time and beat, so you don’t get any sugar clumps and it mixes smoothly. Then you won’t have any holes in your meringue like I did. Mine worked out anyway.
If we said “kapull” instead of “kernel” and “lite” instead of “lew tenant”, maybe my friend Thomas (grad student at Temple U) would be meringue
Bake at a very low temperature for a very long time, and they magically work!
Aquafaba meringue cookies, from slate.com
1 can chickpeas
1 tsp vanilla
sugar- 1.3 times as much chickpea liquid you get (so a cup or less)
Drain the chickpea liquid. Start beating it- I did speed 3 (low) for 4 minutes. Then medium for 4 minutes, then high for 2 minutes. It’ll form fairly stiff peaks, if not as good as egg whites pretty darn close.
Preheat oven to 250. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Beat in the sugar 1 TBSP at a time. Add the vanilla and beat it in too. Dollop onto your parchment paper sheets. Bake for 90 minutes, then turn off oven and crack it. Let cool to room temperature.
This makes about 36 small meringue cookies.
Baking and Math 
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