A leftovers recipe from Nigella Lawson turns out good enough to make on its own – double quantity.

A leftover from Crab Tartlets

My favorite cooking mag Delicious featured Nigella Lawson baking crab tartlets – wonderful in themselves, but not for here and now. For the leftover egg white, she had 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.

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!