— Maria Allen

So I'm going to say that I did have a student in Essential Vegan Desserts some time ago who wanted to make a purplish aquafaba meringue, and she used black bean liquid. I want to go back because I assume you know what aquafaba is, but there's always one or two who don't. Aquafaba means bean water, and it is typically chickpea water, the liquid that chickpeas have been cooked in, whether in a can or cooked from dry, which is the way that I do them. And it has been discovered that this chickpea liquid, when properly pre-handled, will whip like egg white meringue, and I use it all the time. We do Baked Alaska, for example, in this course, which is an assignment. It's fabulous, and meringue cookies, and all kinds of things. So I think that we want to standardize the bean water, and by that, I mean we, I teach my students to reduce the liquid in a can of chickpeas or a can of black beans by about one third. Of course, you're going to use unsalted beans, and then chill it and start from there. When I cook my chickpeas from scratch, and that's what I do, I add a stick of kombu seaweed, which has been found to strengthen the aquafaba. In that case, I reduce the cooking liquid by at least a half, maybe a little bit more, until it's viscous. And then you use the prepared and chilled aquafaba in the same way you would be making an egg white meringue. You whip it with a little bit of acid. I use cream of tartar, and whip it until it's opaque with a whisk. I do it in a stand mixer. Some of my students have done this with the hand mixers, but this takes quite a bit of time. And then once it's opaque, I start adding vegan cane sugar that has been ground to be super fine or caster sugar, one tablespoon at a time, whip, whip, whip, one tablespoon at a time until it's all incorporated, whisking after each addition and then whisking at the end for about five minutes.