Birthday Girl and how to make a Meringue Tower.

It was party time at our house last weekend. Actually its taken us all week to recover from the festivities. But it was all worth it on the day, as nothing compares to a happy crowd of little party goers. 

Quite a lot of Saturday was taken up by baking, with me on the sweets and the man of the house taking care of the main course. With a Sheriff Callie theme, we served Tacos, nachos, sweet corn, and chilli dogs for main course. Little Miss insisted that cow girls and boys definitely eat Chocolate Cupcakes, Meringues, Sticky Lemon Slice, Sheriff Badge Star biscuits, Cinnamon Oysters, Cherry Chocolate Train biscuits and birthday cake!

Here is the Meringue tower I made for the occasion. It was actually really easy to make and just required a little bit of simple assembly the day before. The meringues can be made a few days in advance and kept in an air tight container until required. Little Miss is all about the bright colours at the moment, so I used a selection of Jelly Crystals to get the rainbow pattern going. You can always mix pink and blue to get purple.

Meringue Tower
To make a 75cm tower.

8 egg whites
2 pinches cream of tartar
2 cups of caster sugar'
4 tablespoons cornflour
4 tablespoons each raspberry, blueberry, and lime jelly crystals
Food colours to match
2 piping bags and a 1.5cm round nozzle

a 1m x 80cm piece of pink card + glue and sellotape
220g white chocolate

Preheat the oven to 125deg. C.
Halve the ingredient list and make the meringues in two batches, as 8 egg whites is too much to handles and bake in one batch.
Beat the egg whites and cream of tartar until soft peaks appear. Blend the caster sugar and cornflour together. Add the sugar and cornflour to the egg whites a few tablespoons at a time, beating well between each addition. The mixture should be stiff and glossy, and hold in solid peaks when lifted from the bowl. Divide the mixture in half and fold through one of the jelly crystal flavours with its matching food colour. Place in the piping bag and pipe 2.5cm diameter meringues onto a baking paper lined tray. Don't crowd them on the tray or they may stick together. Mix the second half of the mixture with another jelly flavour and repeat the piping.

Bake for 15 minutes at 125deg. C, then lower the oven temperature to 100deg. and leave for 30 minutes. If you can, its useful to turn the oven off, then leave the meringues in the oven to cool overnight.

Fold the cardboard around itself to form a cone. Use glue to stick the overlapping card together and secure it with sellotape until the glue dries. 

Trim the bottom to form a level cone. Find a large plate that will neatly fit the cone.

Melt the white chocolate in a bowl over a pot of boiling water. 

Put three blobs of chocolate around the edge of the plate and press the cone into it. Leave to set. 

Starting at the bottom of the cone, dip each meringue into the chocolate - not too much - just enough to stick it to the cone.  

I chose to do a line of each colour, but you can arrange them however you might like. 

Don't worry if they don't all fit really neatly, the overall effect will still be impressive! 

The children just loved them.

I'll be posting more party recipes in the next few days. Happy Baking!