Peppermint Meringues

Meringues are one of the most difficult things to bake. They are also one of the most delicious baked goods out there. They have to be whipped for just the right amount of time and the technique for beating them is hard.  I have made meringues twice before. Once at the cooking camp Urban Element and then again in the summer time. Both times were a success. The second time that I made them they didn’t look as pretty as the first time, but they were definitely baked to perfection. So based on these two previous successes, I was confident that I could bake these peppermint meringues to give to a friend for a hostess gift. They did not turn out at all.

Maybe it was the number of egg whites in the recipe, or how I beat it or how long I beat it. These meringues were the biggest fail of 2011. I was so looking forward to having a meringue, and then all my excitement comes crashing down with just one look at these…things. All I can say is that if you can successfully make these then I bet that they’d be delicious. The peppermint extract in them makes them really festive and Christmas-ey too. 🙂

I got this recipe from none other than epicurious.com. I’ll post the link at the bottom of this post for those of you who are willing to try it out. As for me, I think I’ll leave meringue baking to the professionals. I’ll be buying mine from now on. 🙂

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Peppermint-Meringues-368976

The Not-so-Amazing Black Bean Brownies

It’s alive! That was my first thought when I took out my ‘creation’ from the oven. Since the holiday season has come, I decided to go online and see if I could find a gluten and wheat free dessert. On one of my favourite food websites-Epicurious.com- up came this recipe called The Amazing Black Bean Brownie Recipe. It said that it was amazing, so I thought I’d give it a shot.

Well, it turns out that these brownies are not so amazing. The only ingredients in these brownies are beans, butter and chocolate. There is no binding agent, so the brownie mixture turned into butter, brownie and black bean soup. The recipe says that you should let the mixture set for 1-2 hours after taking it out of the oven. However after giving it a little taste, I discovered that it was not worth the wait.  The taste was all grease. Quite disgusting.

Another thing that makes these brownies less than amazing is the fact that they created a huge mess. When I put them in the oven, I didn’t think to the baking dish that they were in on top of a pan covered with aluminum foil. So during the baking process, when the brownie batter bubbled over, it bubbled over onto the oven. Which then turned the oven into an oven filled with smoke. I’m sure you can picture the resulting mess in the kitchen that I then had to clean up. Really what I’m trying to get at here is that the mess created by these brownies is simply not worth giving them a second shot.

Maybe a spectacular gluten and wheat free dessert is out there, I just haven’t found it yet. What I have decided though is that for a gluten/wheat free dessert to work, it will have to have a flour substitute in it. For example rice flour. That will then act as a good binding agent, which will in turn prevent the dessert from turning into a greasy soup. These are good things to know.

If you would like to attempt this recipe for yourself then you can follow this url to the recipe: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/The-Amazing-Black-Bean-Brownies-367890

Thanks for reading!