A leftovers recipe from Nigella Lawson turns out good enough to make on its own - double quantity.
Terrific Apricot Merengues
Starting with Crab Tartlets
My fav cooking mag Delicious. featured Nigella baking crab tartlets - wonderful in themselves, but not for now - and for the leftover egg white, she'd come up with a wonderful idea for a hot day: "peach chewies and a glass of iced coffee for dessert". Of course we don't have any Australian-type hot days here, nor dried peaches, but I can manage dried apricot, and I can fix up some coffee too. As a dessert, it takes some planning due to the longish use of the oven, but this is verrry worth it.
This is for about 20 chewy merengues
- 2 egg whites
- 110 g caster sugar
- 150 g chopped dried apricot
- 1 tablesp cornflour
- 75 g flaked almonds
- 1 teasp ground cinnamon
- bit of vinegar, pinch of salt
Easy & low
Preheat the oven to a low 150°C, then line a baking sheet with paper.
In a large bowl, combine the chopped apricots with the cornflour, then add the almonds and cinnamon. Thoroughly clean a bowl for use with the egg white: wipe with vinegar, then with salt.
Separate the eggs and make sure there's no egg yolk traces in the egg white. (You can use the egg yolk leftover in a nice crab tartlet if you like) Then whisk the egg white until soft peaks form. Add a little sugar at a time, and increase the speed of your beaters to max.
Whisk about 3 minutes to make a thick shiny merengue. Carefulle fold the merengue into the fruit mixture. Spoon blobs of about 4 cm of this mix onto the prepared baking sheet.
Baking
Bake for about 35 to 40 minutes; the merengues should be slightly coloured and crisp on the outside, but still gooey and chewy inside. Terrific!

