Salted Honey Caramel Meringues

I am at a slight loss at where to begin with this post. I feel that I should spend some time describing the fluffy yet chewy meringue and how pretty the swirls of caramel look in them. But . . .

I really, really, really want to tell you about the salted honey caramel sauce, because it is an utter revelation.

It contains no dairy and no refined sugar, but yet is so yummy. So yummy that I kept dipping my finger into the bowl. So yummy that I licked each and every utensil that went anywhere near it. So yummy I could have eaten the whole lot, on its own, by myself.

You get the idea.

The fact that I wanted to devour the whole lot was, in fact, another (albeit smaller) revelation. Because I am not the world’s biggest honey fan, and this caramel does taste of honey. But it’s a buttery, caramel honey. Yet there is no butter in sight. It’s like magic.

The recipe below makes more than you need for the meringues, so there is plenty leftover, which you can drizzle over the cooked meringues, or over ice cream, or in yoghurt, so spread over bread, or dip your finger in each time you go into the fridge . . .

It does need to be kept in the fridge and it does set quite firm, but, you know, that’s what microwaves are for. And there are a couple of notes / observations below the recipe that will hopefully help you.

Right, now I have told you all about the salted honey caramel sauce, I should move onto the meringues themselves.

A basic meringue mix, dolloped onto a baking sheet and swirled with the caramel sauce before baking. I got excited when I peeked through the oven door about halfway through the baking time because the meringues had all puffed up and the swirls of caramel sauce made them look like cinnamon rolls / pinwheel biscuits. They looked so pretty. I was a little disappointed when I pulled them out at the end to see that not only had they fallen back down, but they had also caved in a little.

But that disappointment didn’t last for long. Because cooking the caramel sauce a little bit more makes it taste like toffee, and you get little chewy crispy (yes, both, chewy and crispy) bits on the sides and the meringues are soft and crispy on the edges and lovely and chewy in the middle.

I ate mine with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a hearty helping of extra caramel, but a blob of whipped cream (or whipped coconut cream if you want / need to keep it completely dairy free) would work too. And maybe some raspberries . . . or strawberries . . . or pineapple. Yes! Pineapple totally works because I just remembered that there was one of those tropical fruit packs lying around and I threw the pineapple from it into my bowl along with everything else. So, pineapple wins for me. I also remember that the coldness of the ice cream caused the caramel sauce to firm up so much that I ended up with an ice cream, meringue, pineapple, caramel blob / mass on the end of my spoon, which meant I had to eat it a little like a lollipop and my sister muttered a phrase that contained the words “you”, “child”, “such a” . . . but in my defence, how else was I going to eat it????

Credit where credit is due:

Dairy-free caramel recipe originally found here

Inspiration for caramel meringues from here