Aquafaba is Weird and Wonderful

Liquid leftover from cooking chickpeas, when whipped with sugar and vanilla, tastes just like marshmallow fluff!  The aquafaba (water + bean) craze has been going around mostly the vegan blogosphere for the past few months, but it was new to me.

When baked, said marshmallow fluff turns into meringues. Vegan meringues taste just like eggy meringues, too!

I've taking some good-natured ribbing about turning chickpea brine into a dessert, but how is it any different or grosser than using egg whites? Egg whites are just as slimy as gooey as chickpea brine. It's a matter of perspective. Also, to mask the eggy taste, lots of recipes call for vanilla, and eggless meringues benefit from vanilla as well to mask any perceived bean taste.

Personally, I'm all for kitchen experiments. I'm not vegan by any stretch of the imagination, but I do like the idea of taking something that was formerly a waste product and turning it into something fabulous and cool or making something, like cheese, out of nuts. My next experiment is going to be aquafaba mayonnaise.  Fortunately, I have plenty of canned chickpeas (I pressure can big batches of beans once every 3 months), so I have organic aquafaba galore!

I'm a deficient baker, so if anyone has any idea why my meringues turned out hollow, please leave me a comment! I added 1/2 c of sugar to probably 1/3 cup of aquafaba, and baked these at 200 °F for 2 hours. I don't think I ever made traditional meringues before, so this is all new to me.