MERINGUE SURPRISES
2 egg whites
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/8 teaspoon salt *
1/2 cup granular Splenda or equivalent liquid Splenda
Beat all of the ingredients until fluffy, but not quite stiff. Drop by spoonfuls onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake at 300º about 40 minutes, until crisp and dry.
Makes about 15 meringues
Can be frozen
* I'd cut this back to just a pinch. They were a little too salty. It was just the right amount for real sugar meringues.
Per Serving: 6 Calories; 0g Fat; trace Protein; 1g Carbohydrate; 0g Dietary Fiber; 1g Net Carbs
After my odd experience with Lisa's Coconut Meringue Cookies the other day, I decided to perform an experiment. I made two batches of meringues; one with real sugar and one with granular Splenda. As you can see from the photos, there's no comparison. The Splenda meringues are on the left in both pictures. The sugar meringues are much nicer looking and tasting, but the Splenda meringues are edible. Even though both batches had 1/8 teaspoon salt in them, the Splenda ones tasted too salty. I'd cut the salt down to just a pinch. If you can get past the odd color, these do make an interesting snack.
It looks like it is the Splenda that causes the odd yellow color after all. There was some speculation that it might be the sulphur in the coconut in Lisa's Coconut Meringue Cookies, but this batch had no coconut. Below is how they looked before baking. You can see that the sugar meringue looks like marshmallow creme and the Splenda meringue looks like soapy foam.
UPDATE: I tried another batch of these but used liquid Splenda, left out the salt and used a little French vanilla Torani syrup instead of the vanilla extract. I thought maybe my vanilla might have caused the strange yellow color. Well, they came out just as yellow as before. So, it would seem that it has to be the Splenda since I changed every other variable and got the same results. What's very strange though is that I got an email from someone who tried the recipe and hers came out snow white. If it's not the Splenda then it must be something about the climate here in Houston or something about my oven that's the cause. I'm stumped.