Unicorns, unicorns, unicorns – well I couldn’t resist and I had to bake some rainbow/ unicorn themed bakes for the children to enjoy with the idea of making the “National Unicorn Day” bakes as a Friday treat box this week. With this in mind I have baked some deliciously crisp, melt in the mouth meringue kisses which are coloured with the rainbow colours and I have renamed them as Unicorn Poop.
These meringue kisses took along time to bake as the oven had to be set to Gas 1 to slowly dry the meringue kisses out. I had flavoured the meringue with vanilla essence but other liquid flavourings could be added such as rose, almond, lemon and so on. I made the meringue with egg whites and icing sugar over a pan of simmering water. All you do is whisk until a trial is left in the meringue (I think I learned this method from a Mary Berry recipe) and then transfer to the piping bag which has the food colours painted down the inside of the bag. Once the bag is set up you are ready to pipe. In the oven I had to turn the trays around in order to ensure the meringues baked evenly so that they all had a crisp outside and a melt in the mouth centre. These meringues are not soft in the centre like a marshmallow as they are so small they just turn perfectly crisp. They are easy to over cook though so I had to check them several times over the 90 minutes that they took to bake.
Also, I baked some cookies – well two lots of cookies as I wasn’t happy with the first lot. I was going to make some shortbread and add the colours to 7 sections of the shortbread which I would then have rolled into a cylinder with each coloured dough wrapped around the centre red dough. Then the cylinder of dough can be cut into discs and each disc cut in half. You know what instead of explaining I am going to make a video of these cookies and add it to my Youtube channel tomorrow. I know it is not “National Unicorn Day” tomorrow but you can’t get enough rainbows.
The cookies I made were based on Viennese Whirl or Fingers recipe which I found in one of my recipe books and I followed that recipe as it would use up the 2 egg yolks left over from the meringue. However, this was not my usual Viennese recipe and I wasn’t happy with the results, even though my husband and children (my food critiques) enjoyed them. So I made them again using my own egg free recipe and they turned out much nicer. I think they look lovely and are slightly different from all the other Rainbow Cookies out there.
These Rainbow Cookies and the Meringue Kisses (Unicorn Poop) will be offered for collection on Friday 13th April along with Unicorn Cupcakes which I hope to bake tomorrow – if the gold sugar paste arrives in time. A Rainbow Treat Box will cost £5.00 and will contain a bag of 20 Unicorn Poop, 4 Rainbow Cookies and 2 Unicorn Cupcakes. I need to add the treat box to my webshop to make it easier for customers to order from me. I am hoping that a few local people who can collect from myself will take me up on the offer. 🙂