Those of us celebrating Passover can’t eat anything with flour for eight days, which makes finding dessert to eat a challenge! Now, some people might use the holiday to take a break from sweets, but I like dessert, so . . . not me. Meringues are one of the classic Passover desserts, so I knew I wanted to make them. They use only egg whites, so I used my extra yolks to make chocolate mousse, which also has no flour. So we don’t waste any egg, and we get two desserts instead of just one, yay!

Meringues

Yield: 30 meringues

Ingredients:

*4 egg whites

*¼ teaspoon cream of tartar

*¾ teaspoon vanilla extract

*½ cup superfine sugar

*½ cup granulated sugar

Steps:

1. Preheat the oven to 250 °F.

2. Whisk the egg whites until foamy, then add the cream of tartar and vanilla.

3. Add the sugars one tablespoon at a time while whisking and continue to whisk until stiff peaks form. Don’t stop whisking too early, or your meringues won’t maintain their shape after you pipe or spoon them onto a baking sheet.

4. If you feel confident piping (it’s not that hard, once you get the hang of it!), cut the tip off of a plastic bag. If you have a star tip, put that at the bottom of the bag, if not, you can pipe without the tip. Spoon the meringue into the bag. You can pipe one of three ways:

a. Create a swirl shape: start with the tip on the baking sheet and pipe in a circle, as if you were icing a cupcake.

b. Create a star shape: keep your hands steady and start with the tip touching the baking sheet, then slowly bring your hands up as you squeeze the plastic bag.

c. Make fun shapes! You can make hearts, spell out a word or do pretty much anything you want 🙂

If you don’t want to pipe, you can spoon out the meringue. It might not look as pretty, but it will taste just as good!

5. Bake the meringues for a 45 minutes, then turn the oven off. Leave the meringues in the oven for three hours. Do not open the oven until the three hours are up! The longer you leave the meringues in the oven, the better. Overnight is best. If you take them out before they are completely cooled, they will crack.

*Side note: Before the meringue is baked it has the consistency and taste of marshmallow fluff. I have a suspicion it would make good frosting if you’re like me and aren’t as worried as you should be about eating raw egg.

Chocolate Mousse

Yield: six servings

Ingredients:

*4 egg yolks

*¼ cup sugar

*2 ½ cups heavy cream

*1 cup semisweet chocolate

Steps:

1. Whisk egg yolks until thick, then mix in sugar.

2. Heat 1 cup of the heavy cream on the stove, then off the heat slowly add the cream to the egg/sugar mixture while mixing.

3. Transfer the mixture back to the stove and stir until thick.

4. Add the chocolate and mix until melted and incorporated. Refrigerate the mousse for two hours, taking it out of the refrigerator every half hour to stir.

5. Whisk the remaining cream until it has stiff peaks, then fold it into the mousse.

6. Spoon out the mousse into individual bowls. You can add whipped cream or fruit if you’re feeling fancy.

Didn’t get enough? Check out this post from Passover last year with a recipe and video for flourless chocolate cake.