10 Heavenly Meringue Desserts
These ethereal desserts include simple raspberry macarons, elegant frozen chocolate-chip meringue cake, and lemon meringue pie with a twist.
Cornhusk Meringues with Corn Mousse
This beloved and much-Instagrammed dessert--meringues flavored with charred cornhusk powder and filled with a luscious, sweet corn cream--is from chef Enrique Olvera's brand-new cookbook, Mexico from the Inside Out.
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Raspberry Macarons
These are among the simplest macarons, made with only sugar, almond flour, egg whites and red food coloring—and a filling of raspberry jam.
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Frozen Chocolate-Chip Meringata
Meringata—Italian for "meringue cake"—is an elegant yet homey frozen dessert of whipped cream sandwiched between meringue rounds. Rolando Beramendi slices the meringata and serves it with a warm chocolate-espresso sauce.
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Hazelnut-and-Chocolate Meringue Cake
This extraordinary dessert, made with crisp chocolate-hazelnut meringue and whipped cream, is simple to make. But pastry chef Daniel Jasso of Portland, Oregon's Genoa restaurant has nicknamed it "the beast," because slicing it can be tricky—the meringue tends to crumble. The solution: Freeze the cake, cut it with a serrated knife and let it return to room temperature before serving.
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Summer Berries with Cumin Meringues and Crème Fraîche
This recipe combines antioxidant-packed summer berries with an easy-to-make, protein-rich meringue. A touch of cumin gives the meringues an exotic earthiness, but they're equally delicious without the spice.
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Not Your Usual Lemon Meringue Pie
In her version of lemon meringue pie, Gale Gand forgoes a traditional crust for quick-baked sheets of sugared phyllo dough, which she layers with house-made lemon curd and a brown-sugar meringue. The recipe, a classic at Tru restaurant in Chicago, appears in Gand's book Butter Sugar Flour Eggs (Clarkson Potter). At home, use good quality store-bought phyllo dough and lemon curd.
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Chilled Grapefruit-Caramel Meringue Pie
Most pastry chefs love lemon and orange. Deborah Snyder of Manhattan's Lever House, however, champions the also-ran of the citrus world: grapefruit. In one cold, creamy dessert, she layers pink grapefruit curd in a crunchy graham-cracker crust with caramel sauce and a delicate topping of fluffy meringue.
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Spiced Italian Pecan Meringues
"Don't judge the taste of these cookies by the crags and cracks," says sous-chef Merrin Mae Gray of L.A.'s Rossoblu. (Their Italian name is brutti ma buoni, "ugly but good.") The pecans and potent grappa are unexpectedly elegant, and the crisp outsides and chewy centers make these meringues seriously addictive.
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Mom's Citrus Meringue Pie
In 2018, Food & Wine named this recipe one of our 40 best.
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Sweet Potato Meringue Pie
This sweet-potato pie looks like a pumpkin pie, but the filling is actually made with sweet potato.