Have you heard about aquafaba? It’s a revolutionary discovery for vegans and anyone on an egg-free diet! Aquafaba is just a fancy word for bean liquid, which many of us would usually just throw away, but it can actually be used as a replacement for egg whites. I know it sounds strange, but it really does work.

Having read a lot about aquafaba and it’s amazing properties and potential, I thought it was about time I tried some recipes for myself.

First of all, I needed some bean liquid. Apparently you can use any bean liquid, but I’ve read that chickpea liquid is the best. So I opened a small tin of chickpeas and drained off the liquid into a small bowl – this is aquafaba. (Don’t worry, we ate the chickpeas later on!)

There’s been a lot of excitement online about using aquafaba to make meringues, but I’ve never made these before and as something of a cowardy custard, I decided to try a much easier recipe first.

I found a really simple recipe for an aquafaba omelette here: http://avirtualvegan.com/vegan-omelette/

I’ve made many an omelette in my vegetarian days so I was comfortable with the idea of making this. However, I did invite my mum round to help/observe/supervise. Yes, I am a mummy’s girl and I don’t care who knows 🙂

To be honest, the recipe was so simple that there wasn’t much help needed. More honesty: I didn’t think it was going to work. Right up until the point where I tasted it… oh… my… god! It was light, it was fluffy, it was better than an omelette.

Ok so the fact that I filled it with some great-tasting vegetables did help. But even just eaten by itself, it was amazing. My mum agreed. My other half agreed. My tummy agreed.

Spurred on by this success, I thought I’d give meringues a go… why not!

I used the original meringue recipe from one of the revolutionaries who discovered the potential of bean liquid, here: http://www.vegancookery.net/p/aquafaba.html

Again, I invited my mum around to help and this time she was utterly invaluable at advising what ‘stiff peaks’ look like – I had no idea!

I should perhaps mention at this point that the only sugar I use nowadays is Rapadura sugar, and I saw no reason why this fine, powdery sweetener wouldn’t work… if you can see where this is going, good on you!

During the making, everything seemed to be going so well – the mix was light and fluffy, and even tasted good (a good chef always tastes the mix). After 90 minutes in the oven, they came out looking and feeling like ‘proper’ meringues. I was amazed.

It wasn’t until I went to pick one up that I realised there was a problem. Every single one had stuck to the baking paper. Uh oh. Except for one, for some reason – this is the one in the photo above.

It didn’t help that they had all become hollow as well. Most of the sugar seemed to have sunk to the bottom and stuck to the paper. Rats. So I broke off the bits I could and ended up with a pile of meringue ‘bits’ like this:

They’re very tasty and meringue-like though, with a caramel flavour, so it wasn’t a complete disaster.

I’m still pondering what went wrong: was it the baking paper or the sugar? Did I use too much sugar or just the wrong type of sugar? Maybe these meringues will never work with Rapadura? Maybe the oven was too hot? Maybe I used the wrong sort of bean liquid – I didn’t have any chickpeas this time so I used butter bean liquid. Maybe it has to be chickpea liquid? I don’t know…

I’ll change one aspect and give the recipe another try. In the meantime, if you have any ideas what I did wrong, please let me know – but be kind!