Crunchy on the outside yet slightly soft on the inside, these Swiss meringues melt in your mouth like a little ray of sunshine. Perfect for summertime, try your hand at making these sweet sun meringues yourself. They're super easy to make and will go down a treat, especially with the little ones! Why not get them in the kitchen and have some family fun baking up your own sunshine meringues?

This recipe makes a batch of 14 meringues.

Ingredients

• Silver Spoon caster sugar: 178g (6 1/4oz)
• Fresh egg whites: 106g (3 3/4oz)
• Vanilla bean paste: 8g (1/4oz)
• SK Professional Dust Food Colour: 1g (<1/16oz) Daffodil Yellow
• Water for saucepan: 500g (1lb 1 3/4oz)
• Silver Spoon icing sugar: 16g (5/8oz), optional

Equipment

• Baking trays: 2
• Parchment paper
• Mixing bowl
• Whisk
• Saucepan
• Candy thermometer
• Stand mixer with a whisk attachment
• Piping bags: 2

Method: Making The Swiss Meringue Suns

1. Preheat your oven to 70°C (158°F). Line two baking trays with parchment paper.
2. Place egg whites, caster sugar and vanilla bean paste into a mixing bowl and whisk until combined.
3. Pour water into a saucepan and wait until it starts to simmer.

Adding the Daffodil Yellow dust food colour into the meringue mix

Gradually, add as much food colour as you want until you achieve the desired yellow shade
4. Place bowl with the egg mixture over the saucepan of simmering water. Make sure the bowl is not touching the water! Whisking constantly, heat the egg mixture until it reaches 70°C (158°F) on a candy thermometer. Remove the bowl from the saucepan of water and carefully pour the egg mixture into the bowl of your stand mixer.
5. Add the Daffodil Yellow dust food colour into the bowl and, using the whisk attachment, beat the egg white mixture on high speed for 3–4 minutes. If you want to make the meringue more yellow, gradually add in some more dust food colour until you achieve the shade you like. Add the icing sugar now if you want to use it, and then whisk again on high speed for a minute until the meringue is fluffy, glossy and holds a stiff peak.

Cutting the piping bag for the sun circles

Cutting the piping bag for the sun rays
6. Cut off the tip of each piping bags: make sure you cut them so one bag has a large cut tip and the other has a smaller cut tip. The large cut bag will be used to pipe the suns, and the small cut tip will be used to pipe the rays.
7. Pour all the batter gently into the piping bags. Make sure you don't overfill the bags or else the batter will ooze out from the opening when you start to pipe!
8. Take the first baking tray and pipe some circles using the bag with the larger cut tip – make sure they aren't piped too close together. Then using the bag with the smaller cut tip, pipe the batter in a zig-zag motion around each circle to form the rays. The meringues are now ready to be baked. Place the baking tray into the oven and set a timer for 1 hour and 45 minutes.

You want your meringue to reach a stiff peak consistency so it holds its shaped when piping the sun shapes

Using the two piping bags, pipe the sun shapes onto the baking paper
9. Repeat step 8 to pipe the second tray, but leave this tray to dry at room temperature until the first tray is baked. Then bake the second tray for the same amount of time.
10. Once each tray is baked, allow the meringues to cool completely before removing them from the parchment paper. Then enjoy your cute sunshine-shaped meringues!

Information

If you're looking for some inspiration or want to decorate your sun meringues in the same way, get your hands on a copy of the Summer 2021 issue of Mini Bakers magazine. The wonderful Viktorija Siskova prepared this sweet sunshine meringue lollipop project for little bakers to have a go at themselves, and all the instructions can be found in her easy-to-follow tutorial.

Grab a copy of the Summer 2021 issue HERE if you and the kids want to complete the full project!

Enjoy your finished sun meringues. Add some decoration if you want - check out Mini Bakers Summer 2021 issue for inspiration and a step by step tutorial!