Vegan Meringue Cookies

Vegan meringue cookies are a delightful and innovative dessert for those seeking a vegan alternative to traditional meringue. Made from the liquid of cooked chickpeas, aquafaba provides a unique texture that mimics egg whites, making it an ideal ingredient for creating light, fluffy cookies.

Course Desserts

Cuisine American

Keyword air fryer dessert, aquafaba, Gluten Free Cake, gluten free cookie, gluten free recipes, Meringue, meringue cookies, vegan, vegan dessert

Prep Time 10

Cook Time 1 30

Cool Down in Oven 12

Servings cookies

Calories 24kcal

Author Janine Waite

Equipment

Pastry Bag

Ingredients

6 tbsp garbanzo beans liquid Drain liquid from a garbanzo bean can and capture the liquid and measure.
¼ tsp vanilla extract
⅛ tsp cream of tartar
½ cup Bakers sugar This is a fine baking sugar

Instructions

Gather All Ingredients
The whipping of the meringue can be a bit intense, so it is best to gather and measure all your ingredients before you begin.
Line a Baking Tray
Line a flat baking try with parchment paper.
Preheat Oven
Preheat your convect oven to 210 degrees. This is a low and steady baking process.
Make Meringue
Drain the garbanzo beans and measure out the fluid for your cookies. Place aquafaba in your mixer along with cream of tartar and vanilla. Make sure all your equipment is thoroughly dry.
Whip for 6 – 8 minutes (at 6 on your mixer) until soft peaks form. This is a solid peak, but the tip will fall over after a few seconds.
Now, you will add small spoonfuls of the caster sugar and beat thoroughly after each addition. After adding the sugar, increase your speed to the highest level. Beat anywhere between 4 - 8 minutes to achieve stiff peaks. You can turn the bowl upside down, and the aquafaba will not move. Also, when you place your beater in the mixture and pull it out, the peaks will be stiff, and the tips will not fall over.
Pipe Meringue
You can use a large Ziploc plastic baggie and cut off about a 1/2-inch hole in the corner of the bag. Or you can use a pastry bag. I know I used a tip for the first batch that I photographed, but I highly recommend just using a pastry bag and having a hole in the bottom.
If you like, place food dye inside your pastry bag in vertical lines going up the bag. This will make pretty red streaks of color in your meringue.
Place the aquafaba in your pastry bag, making sure to fold over the top of the bag like a cuff. After adding the meringue, fold the top of the bag back up to position and twist it to seal the meringue inside the bottom half of it.
When piping your meringue, I found you want your pastry bag to be perpendicular to the cookie tray so you don’t get a lopsided cookie. Then, place the tip pretty close to the parchment paper and squeeze your bag. As you squeeze, lift the bag and release the meringue from the cookie shape. It is a little tricky, but starting close to the parchment paper will give you a good base for the kiss shape.
Bake Cookies
They will bake for an hour and a half if you make small cookie kisses. After baking, leave the cookies in the oven for at least an hour and a half while the oven cools. I highly recommend that once the oven is at room temperature, you can remove the cookies. Leaving them in the oven ensures all the moisture is gone and dry, preventing cracking.
Storage
Once the cookies come out of the oven, store them immediately in an air-tight container. This step is essential if you are baking on a rainy day!

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