I’ve been wanting to make meringue mushrooms ever since I made a Christmas log cake. I’m not crazy about Christmas cake or Christmas pudding so I tend to go continental at Christmas and make the log instead. Now what goes on a log? Mushrooms of course. It seemed also a good idea to surround the gingerbread houses I made for the Ocado Scandinavian supper club with some fantasy edible mushrooms. The North Pole myths of flying reindeers derives from the fly agaric mushrooms they eat.
I tested a couple of recipes but recommend Joy of Baking’s recipe (she really is brilliant and so dependable) but I added a couple of tweaks: liquorice and chocolate. Just like Scandinavians, I love liquorice, especially the salty kind.
I played around with liquorice meringue recipes, melting liquorice and using essence of Liquorice but all I got was ugly brown meringues. Eventually I figured out the best method is to get some hard liquorice candy and grate it onto the meringue tops. The flavour is delicious.
Get some disposable piping bags as you are going to be doing alot of piping. I’ve doubled the recipe, so if you screw up a bunch then you have plenty more.
A stick of hard liquorice candy (available from Fox’s Spices Tel: 01789-266420)
Option: some cocoa powder.
A bar of good dark chocolate
Some red food colouring (if you want to make magic toadstools). (Food colouring pastes are the most intense).
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That Food Stories about to demolish my gingerbread house/forest |
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Served with blueberry soup and blueberry icecream for the Ocado Scandinavia meal. |
These were bloody brilliant. I remember screaming 'THEY LOOK JUST LIKE MUSHROOMS!!'. I also have a brilliant video of Donald smashing one of the houses and the PR in the background looking genuinely disturbed.
They did didn't they?
Get Donald to send me the video!
Cute! I like the cupcake idea too! xxx