This cute and cloud-like dessert is made by whipping egg whites until it is shiny and fluffy. If you have a stand mixer, this recipe can be quite easy.
These rose water meringues are sweet. They melt in your mouth and have a subtle floral essence to them.
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What you will love about rose meringues
This is a recipe for rose meringues without cream of tartar. I don’t know about you, but that is an ingredient that I don’t even own.
Some people swear that you must use cream of tartar when making meringues, but I beg to differ. As long as you have a good electric mixer, you don’t need the cream of tartar one bit!
I’m going to walk you through step by step how to make meringues the easy way!
Tips
The one thing to take away from this recipe is, when whipping the egg whites, SLOWLY add the sugar. If you add it too quickly you will destabilize your meringue base and it will lose its fluffy texture.
Ingredients
There are only two ingredients in a basic meringue recipe, for us it will be 3 ingredients since we are adding rose water.
All you need are egg whites and plain old granulated sugar! That’s it!
The work comes in whipping it all together and slowly drying them (or baking them on a very low temperature for a long time).
Some people add cream of tartar to meringues since it is a stabilizing ingredient. I do not think it is necessary whatsoever.
If you have an electric mixer, or a stand mixer with a whisk is even better, then you can let the mixer do all the work to whip the eggs until they are very stable.
Egg whites are basically a stabilizer in and of themselves, so I don’t see the need for cream of tartar. Who even knows what cream of tartar is made of anyway. Right?!
As for the sugar, my original recipe calls for an entire cup of granulated sugar. I just want to forewarn you that 1 whole cup of sugar in this recipe is a lot!
Your meringues will be very sweet. If you don’t want them to be too sweet, you can cut back on the sugar. I have made this with ¾ cup of sugar before and it was fine.
I will venture to say that you can probably cut back to ½ cup of sugar and still have a delicious meringue.
As for the rosewater, all you need is 1 teaspoon. A little goes a long way! What is rose water? It is actually water that is made with rose pedals and extract.
It smells very floral (just like a bouquet of roses) and adds a floral essence to the recipe. Make sure to buy food grade rose water, not rose water for topical use.
Rose water is traditionally used in Middle Eastern desserts and baking. Check out my recipe for Lebanese baklava (AKA “Baklawa”) to learn more about it there.
That is the best recipe out there BTW.
These are the ingredients for rose meringues:
- Egg whites
- Granulated sugar
- Rose water
That’s it! That is freaking it!
How to make rose meringues
Let’s start by getting out a stand mixer and the whisk attachment. I can’t emphasize enough how an electric mixer does all the work for this recipe.
It’s going to be whipping it for about 8 minutes straight. Can you imagine doing that all by hand?!
Preheat the oven to 275°F.
The first thing we need to do with our ingredients is to separate the eggs. Separating eggs is rather easy, once you get the hang of it.
I don’t know what to tell you to do with the egg yolks, but we are not going to be using them in this recipe at all.
Put 2 bowls on your work surface in preparation for separating your eggs. Take one egg and crack it as clean as you can so that it separates into two.
While working over one of the bowls, open the egg and start transferring it from shell to shell, letting the egg white fall into the bowl below.
You should only have to transfer it a few times before you have fully separated the white from the yolk. The yolk will still be in the eggshell and the white should be in the bowl below.
You can dump the yolk into the other bowl and use it for whatever later.
Continue separating all 4 of the eggs. After they are separated, pour the egg whites into the mixing bowl of the stand mixer. Add 1 teaspoon of rose water.
Turn the mixer onto medium to high speed. I have a KitchenAid mixer and I started this off around speed 6 and by the end I had it turned up to 7-8.
Let the egg whites whisk for about 2 minutes until it becomes very foamy and soft peaks begin to form.
As soon as soft peaks begin to form (you can see ripples in the egg whites but it doesn’t hold its shape very well), you can begin to add the sugar, 1-2 tablespoons at a time.
IMPORTANT: It is very important to add the sugar very slowly into the egg whites while it is mixing.
If you add the sugar too quickly, you will destabilize the eggs and the sugar won’t dissolve properly.
Over the course of 6-7 minutes, while the mixer is on medium-high speed (somewhere around 6-8), add the sugar 1-2 tablespoons at a time and allow it to keep mixing for at least 30 seconds before adding more sugar.
You will notice that the egg whites keep getting more voluminous and begin to have a glossy sheen on them.
This is good, we are making progress.
After about 6 minutes of the egg whites whisking, all the sugar should be added.
Stop the mixer and take a spatula and scrape down the bottom and sides of the mixing bowl to make sure that all of the sugar gets incorporated.
Turn the mixer on again for another minute or so. Your meringue batter should now be shiny, very white and stiff peaks should form easily and not lose their shape.
This is when we know it is ready.
Prepare a baking sheet by lining it with parchment paper (a must for this recipe!). If you want to make a pretty rose shape out of your meringues, you can by using a piping bag and a decorative tip.
I personally just like to scoop a 2-3 tablespoon size ball of meringue base onto the parchment paper, then I take the back of the spoon and form a peak on top.
Allow a few inches of space between each meringue.
Place them in the oven on the middle rack and bake them for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, move the meringues to the bottom rack of the oven and bake them for another 20 minutes.
Turn the oven down to 225°F and bake them on the bottom rack for another 20 minutes (60 minutes total). At this point they still need to dry out more.
Turn the oven off and leave them in the oven until the oven is completely cooled. This could take several hours, in fact I usually do this in the evening and then I leave them in the oven overnight.
After they have dried out completely, remove them from the oven and they are ready to serve however you want to consume them! You will notice how fluffy and light they are. They are almost like little crispy little clouds. Enjoy!
Storage
Meringues have a very long storage time, which is awesome! Since it is made out of egg whites and has a very low fat content, meringue can last for 2-3 weeks in a container at room temperature.
You can also freeze them for up to 2-3 months and use them later!
Variations
Meringues can be versatile in that you can add different extracts to them, from almond, to lavender and vanilla, you can get very creative with them!
Equipment
- Stand mixer with whisk attachment
- Large baking sheet
- Parchment paper
FAQ’s
Why are my meringues chewy?
The texture of meringues should be light, fluffy, crispy and they should melt in your mouth. They should not be dense nor chewy whatsoever.
If they are chewy it could be one of several things:
- You added the sugar too quickly, or too early into the mixing process
- You didn’t whip them enough
- You didn’t bake or dry them out enough
If you add the sugar too quickly, you can cause the egg whites to lose their stability, resulting in chewy meringues and the sugar doesn’t dissolve fully.
It is very important to have a low temperature and long baking time in order to dry them out sufficiently so that they are crispy and crumbly.
What do I do with leftover meringues?
- Dip them in chocolate and eat them
- Crush them up to use in a trifle
- Crumble over ice cream
- Use meringue crumbs and add strawberries and whipped cream for a sort of meringue shortcake
What is a soft peak vs stiff peak?
When whipping egg whites or whipped cream, there are various terms that are used like “soft peaks” and “stiff peaks”.
Soft peaks refer to when the egg whites (or whipped cream) begin to get bigger in volume and become thicker.
Soft peaks are the little ripples you see as you are whipping it, but they don’t hold their shape very well.
Stiff peaks refer to after the whipped ingredient has gone past the soft peak stage. Stiff peaks hold their shape easily without falling back down.
📖 Recipe
Rose Meringues
Equipment
- Stand mixer with whisk attachment
- Large baking sheet
- Parchment paper
Ingredients
- 4 large egg whites
- 1 cup granulated sugar*
- 1 teaspoon rose water
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 275°F and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Place 2 small bowls on your working surface.
- Crack an egg as cleanly as you can in half. Over one of the bowls, transfer the egg back and forth between the 2 eggshell halves, letting the white of the egg fall into the bowl. You should only have to transfer it from shell to shell just a few times in order to separate the egg. Place the egg yolk in the other bowl and you can use it however you want (it’s not used at all in this recipe).
- Separate all the eggs accordingly.
- Put the egg whites into the bowl of a stand mixer and add 1 teaspoon of rose water.
- With the whisk attachment, turn the mixer on medium-high and whisk it for about 2 minutes, until it becomes foamy and soft peaks begin to form.
- When soft peaks begin to form, while the mixer is still on, SLOWLY add the sugar, about 1-2 tablespoons at a time over about a 6-minute time frame.
- Let the whisk keep mixing the egg whites for about 30 seconds before adding more sugar.
- After 6 minutes, the sugar should be added, and the egg whites should be glossy and have at least tripled in volume (or more). Stop the mixer and scrape down the sides with a spatula to make sure all the sugar gets incorporated.
- Mix for another minute.
- Stiff peaks should form at this point, and it should be ready to bake.
- Put a 2-3 tablespoon size dollop on the prepared baking sheet, leaving several inches between each meringue. You can make it decorative by putting the meringue into a piping bag and using a decorative tip instead, if you want it to look like a flower or a rose.
- Place it in the oven on the center rack and bake it for 20 minutes.
- After 20 minutes, move the meringue to the lowest rack in the oven and bake for another 20 minutes.
- Lower the oven to 225°F and bake for another 20 minutes (one hour of baking time total).
- Turn the oven off and leave the meringues in the oven until it has completely cooled (this could take several hours), or even overnight.
- Serve and enjoy!
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