Meringue pops are my favourite cake toppers because it's easy to pipe any shape and to create
lots of colour and texture and they're delicious! My recipe makes about 24 meringue pops depending
on their size but you can easily halve or double the recipe depending on how many you need. Start
by separating four eggs by cracking the eggs and then passing the yolk back and forth between the
eggshells, letting the whites fall down into a bowl underneath. Make sure you don't get any of
the yolk into the egg whites. To be safe you can transfer the egg whites one at a time into the
bowl of your mixer so that if you do spill any egg yolk into the bowl, you'll only be contaminating
one egg white. You can use the yolks to make lemon curd or any flavor of curd which makes
a delicious filling for cakes or you can fold it into your frosting for a strong fruity flavour.
If you're weighing your egg whites, maybe because you bought egg whites in a carton,
you'll need about 160 grams or five and a half ounces. Pour the egg whites into the bowl of
your mixer and add one cup of sugar, which is 225 grams or 8 ounces and add a pinch of salt. Heat a
small saucepan of water over high heat until it's boiling. Turn the heat off and place your mixing
bowl on top of the saucepan. Whisk the egg white mixture together for two minutes and then pinch
some and rub your fingers together and if you feel any grains of sugar, whisk for another minute.
If the mixture is smooth move the bowl to your mixer and you'll need a whisk attachment for
this next part. Whisk on the highest speed until stiff peaks form, which takes about 7 minutes.
While the egg whites are thickening, prepare your piping bags by fitting
them with whatever piping tips you'd like to use. I like using any star shapes like
the typical 1M tip and open star tips like an 8B or 4B or #32 or #199 work really well, too.
Fold the tops of your piping bags over so that they'll be easier to fill with
less mess then check on your egg whites. This is the texture you're looking for:
while the whisk is whisking you'll see texture in the egg whites that stays there, it doesn't sink
back into the egg whites by the time the whisk gets back around to that part of the bowl again.
Lift the whisk out of the bowl and the whisk should leave a peak in the egg whites
that stays upright even after removing the whisk. It's fine if the peak droops slightly.
Now look at the egg white on the whisk. There should be a peak at the top of the
whisk that might fold over slightly at the end but if you hold the whisk upright the
peak of the egg whites should hold its shape. The egg whites should look thick and glossy.
Spoon the mixture into your piping bags or into bowls, which you can tint using gel colours.
Try to fold the colour in gently instead of stirring aggressively.
Spoon all of your colours of meringue into piping bags and now you're ready to pipe!
Line a baking tray or two with parchment paper or a non-slip mat. Place a paper straw down
and hold it steady with one hand while you pipe with the piping bag in your other hand.
I'm piping hearts with an 8B piping tip, squeezing the piping bag and moving the bag slightly away
from me to make a bulge at the top and then pulling the bag back towards me and releasing
my pressure on the bag as I swipe away to make the tip at the bottom of the heart. This is the
same technique as for piping wave borders on a cake using frosting from the previous module.
You can use a toothpick to pull off any stray strands of meringue to tidy up the shape.
If you want to you can place sprinkles on the shape now and they'll bake into the meringue pops.
You can pipe half of the pops upside down to fit more onto each tray.
If you pipe a shape you don't like like this heart I attempted with a 1M
tip you can wipe it off with a paper towel and pipe something else instead. Toothpicks
are really useful to pop any air bubbles in the meringues or to tidy up any imperfections.
For a swirl use any star tip but a 1M or 2D are my favourites. Start piping
at the top of a straw and as you spiral outwards you'll cover up more of the straw
which the meringue will attach to. If you don't want to hold the straw as you pipe
to stop it from moving you can pipe a dot of meringue onto the baking tray first and push
the straw into that to hold it steady and then pipe your swirl or whatever shape you're piping.
I like to add sprinkles to match the colour scheme of my cake or if I'm going to use a certain
sprinkle mix to make a sprinkle border around the bottom of the cake I'll use that same sprinkle mix
to decorate my meringue pops. It takes a bit of planning ahead but I think it's worth the
effort because it really brings everything on the cake together. This is one of the 50 techniques I
teach in my online course on 50 Easy Cake Decorating Techniques for ANY Skill Level
and you can find out more and sign up by clicking the link in the top of the screen or it's in the
video description. You can see that I can fit a lot more meringue pops on my tray by piping
half of them upside down, to fit a meringue pop at the bottom in between two other meringue pops.
If you use a round tip you won't create texture on the meringue
or if you over-mix the meringue when you add colour you'll make the meringue runny and it
won't hold the texture of the piping tip as well as meringue that isn't over-mixed. If that happens
you can use the toothpick to flatten any unwanted texture to make a smooth shape with no texture.
You can make these on parchment paper instead of a silicon mat and the process is exactly the same.
To make a shape with lots of texture and as much colour as you like, draw or trace a shape
onto the parchment paper and place a straw down so that it stops at the midpoint of the shape.
The pencil will transfer onto the back of your shape so it's a good idea to flip the parchment
paper over before you start piping. Use a variety of piping tips and techniques to fill the shape,
piping swirls and rosettes and whatever other textures you like.
I'm using a few shades of pale pink for this heart but you can make it as colourful as you like.
This would be a fun way to create numbers to use as cake toppers for a birthday cake.
When i make meringue pops I try to make them for several cakes at a time to make
the most of the batch since it takes a few minutes to prepare the meringue mixture so
i like to maximize that time spent by sharing it amongst several cakes.
You can also make these meringue pops as treats on their own and you can skip the straws if you like.
You can pipe little meringue kisses with a 1M tip or any other star tip
and press them into the frosting on top or on the side of a cake or they work really
well on top of number cakes to add a bit of colour. After piping all of your meringues,
bake them at 200 degrees Fahrenheit or 90 degrees Celsius for 90 minutes.
By cooking them at a low temperature you'll prevent the meringue discoloring. Also,
at this temperature my paper straws don't burn and I've also used cookie pop sticks and those don't
burn either. If you don't have either of those you can even use toothpicks or wooden skewers.
After 90 minutes when you touch a meringue pop it should be firm, not soft or sticky. If it's
still sticky cook them for another 15 minutes and then try again. When the meringue pops are cooked,
turn the oven off but leave the meringue pops in the oven for another two hours. After one hour of
cooling I crack the oven door open so that the pops cool completely. By letting the meringue
pops cool this gradually you're preventing them from cracking. When they're cool you'll be able
to lift them easily off the parchment paper or silicon mat. Most sprinkles stay shiny when you
bake them and the paper straws don't burn because the baking temperature is so low.
After they cool I store my meringue pops in a large tupperware like a cake caddy
so that they stay crispy. I put a piece of parchment paper in between each layer of
meringues to make sure they don't stick to each other. They'll be fine like this for a week.
If you don't store them in an airtight container they'll get soggy.
I push the pops into the cake as close to serving as possible so that they stay crispy.
If the straws are too long you can cut them so that they don't stick up as high out of the cake
and it's really easy to cut paper straws so I like using them instead of cookie pops.
They also come in every colour imaginable so you can match the colour scheme of your
cake. I like to vary the height of each of the meringue pops. These meringue pops add so much
texture and colour to cakes that they make even a very simple frosted cake look fancy! Take my
free online course on 10 Frosting Techniques by going to www.britishgirlbakes.com and for more
cake ideas and inspiration join my Club for access to all of the classes on my online cake school,
both current and future classes as well as exclusive members-only live demonstrations
and Q&A sessions. The link for my online cake school is in the top of the screen
and in the video description or you can go to www.britishgirlbakes.com Thanks for watching!