Orange Meringues

I am not a great cook. I am a good cook and I am creative, so that gets me out of many situations where I imagine others would throw in the towel. I have absolutely no misgivings about where I fall short (see previous entry), especially after a night like tonight.

A few days ago, I made Raspberry Confetti Kisses using Easybaked's recipe. They were really easy and they were pretty cute. I substituted raspberry jell-o for orange (cause that’s what I had) and topped it with decorating sugar instead of confetti sprinkles (mistake, btw - it caused some of them to fall in on themselves). For some reason, I have no pictures of these - I don’t know why. Sorry. Anyway, the taste was… okay. I could really taste the vinegar, which bothered me because I was making them to give away. So I thought I could just make them without the vinegar - they were poofy and meringue-like before I added it into the mix, so there should be no real issues, I thought. Easy, right?

…

So, I did it exactly the same. The instructions read beat mixture until it stands in peaks. So I beat.

And beat.

And beat.

30 minutes of beating with a friggin hand mixer and this is what I got:

Orange and egg white soup.

Now, this is not my first meringue. I make pies. I top said pies with meringue. Meringue this liquidy has only happened to me once (the first time I ever made one - and not since, damnit.) So I don’t know what I did wrong. At this point I’m going a little crazy inside.

Side note - did you know you can do a lot while holding a hand mixer? Like Facebooking, cursing the soupy liquid, checking the weather (it’s getting cold here!!),looking up other meringue recipes since this one is obviously going no where…

Hmm….. cream of tarter. That’s an interesting ingredient that is currently missing from my mixture.

Crap.

25 minutes and approx 3/4 tsp later I have a lovely whipped up meringue:

Look at those beautiful peaks.

Finally.

They turned out great. Not sure they were worth all that effort though…