Chocolate Orange Meringues

This dish for The Egg Award 2013 was entered by Kupkuchen food blog

Click this link for details on how to enter your recipe

Chocolate Orange Meringues with Seville Orange Curd, Creme Fraiche and Cocolate Ganache




Irish food blogger 'Kupkuchen' keeps her own hens so her eggs couldn't be any more fresh or local, perfect for this The Egg Award entry!

"I’m lucky enough to have a fairly constant supply of fresh free range eggs courtesy of Guinness, Pepper and Buffy, my three back garden hens. The quality of ingredients really does affect the finished recipe – use free range eggs and you will notice the difference!"









The Seville Orange Curd (River Cottage recipe) is delicious and following on the River Cottage theme of pairing orange curd with meringue I decided to put the left over egg whites to good use making chocolate orange meringues with Seville orange curd and creme fraiche filling.

Meringues

Ingredients: 

4 egg whites (from free range hens!)

200g white caster sugar

50g good quality dark chocolate broken into small pieces from 100g bar.

Zest of 1 orange

Filling

Ingredients: 

About 8 Seville oranges, enough for 400ml of juice, strained

Finely grated zest of 1 navel orange

75g cornflour, sifted

4 egg yolks

250g caster sugar

Method:

In a clean bowl whisk the egg whites until stiff (and yes I do test with the upside down bowl method!). Continue whisking and add in the sugar one tablespoon at a time until all the sugar is incorporated. Gently fold in the broken chocolate pieces and orange zest to mix well.

Spoon or pipe the meringue mixture onto a baking sheet lined with baking paper (use little dabs of meringue mixture to stick the paper to the tray) – roughly 5-6cm wide circles – a good heaped tablespoon per meringue.

I use a fan oven and for mine I find heating to 140°c then dropping down to 120°c to work well for meringue – if you like them to stay white try the temperature a bit lower – pop the meringues in the oven and immediately turn the temperature down to 120°c – bake for about 1 hour.

Once baked allow to cool completely and gently peel off the baking paper.

Sandwich the meringues together with a spoonful each of thick creme fraiche and orange curd. Drizzle with chocolate ganache (melt the remainder of the chocolate and whisk through a couple of tablespoons of cream).

Enjoy!