Recipe: »Vegan Meringue Sandwiches«

Recipe: »Vegan Chocolate Swirl Meringue Sandwiches with Chocolate Hazelnut Filling«

Ingredients: 

• 1 can chickpeas
• 200g caster sugar
• pinch of salt
• 50g dark chocolate
• drop of vanilla extract

For the hazelnut spread: 

• 250g roasted hazelnuts
• 50g dark chocolate
• 2 tbsp melted coconut oil
• 2 tbsp maple syrup
• a few drops of vanilla extract

Preparation: 

1. Preheat your oven to 110°C fan/ 130°C.
2. To make the meringue, drain the chickpeas from the cans (make sure to keep the water, that’s the ingredient you need!) Keep the chickpeas for use in another recipe and put the chickpea water (aquafaba) in a clean bowl.
3. Use an electric whisk to beat the aquafaba with the pinch of salt for a few minutes. After a few minutes slowly add the sugar, and then continue to beat on a high speed until the mixture forms stiff peaks, and you can hold the bowl upside down without anything falling out. This takes about 15 minutes.
4. Melt the chocolate, leave it to cool for around 15 minutes. While it is cooling, spoon dollops of the aquafaba mixture onto a lined baking tray, using the back of a spoon to smooth them out into flatter round shapes.
5. Drizzle the meringue rounds with the cooled melted chocolate.
6. Bake the meringues for 1 hour 45 minutes until they are crisp (you want them to be crisp all the way through) then turn the oven off and leave the meringues to completely cool inside the oven.
7. Whilst the meringues are baking make the chocolate filling. Put the hazelnuts in a processor and blitz for around 10 minutes, until a hazelnut butter forms.
8. Add in the melted chocolate, melted coconut oil, maple syrup and vanilla and blitz for a further few minutes until everything combines into a smooth mixture.
9. Once the meringues are completely cooled, you can build the sandwiches. Use a flat knife to spread some hazelnut spread over the base of one meringue and then push the base of a second meringue on top, so the hazelnut spread is glueing the 2 meringues together (if the spread feels a little loose, you can put it in the fridge for 30minutes or so to firm up and make it better at sticking the meringues together). Any hazelnut spread you have left over will keep for up to 5 days – it’s delicious spread on toast too!