Ghostly meringues and a bloody Halloween

This is my final Halloween post and it is a super easy one! This recipe is simple enough to do with kids but fun enough for adults too…my only warning is that it can get a little messy.

For these ghosties to work you need a decent meringue recipe. I make my meringues using the same recipe that I make swiss meringue buttercream with, except that I stop at the sugar and egg whites part of the instructions.

Line two baking trays with baking paper and preheat the oven to 120C.

Once you’ve got your meringue forming firm, glossy peaks, pop the mixture into a piping bag with a round nozzle on the end of it. If you don’t have a piping bag, just put the mixture in a snap lock bag and snip the end off.

For the ghosts, pipe out a fat circle as the base, then pipe out two more fat circles, making them slightly smaller each time. They may look a little bit like a white poo – this is okay, they’ll still be super cute. I Instagrammed mine once they were baking because I was pretty in love with them. See them here!

If you’re making witches hats, pipe out a flatter circle as the base, then in one continuous stroke, squeeze the bag lightly and pull upwards so that you get a skinny peak. This may take a little practice, but you can always scoop up the dud ones and re-pipe them.

You may want to spread out some newspaper underneath your baking tray at this moment, because cleaning up red food colouring is not fun. It has this magical ability to go everywhere – I didn’t know how talented I was at splattering “blood” until I managed to spray it almost a metre away from the meringues without even trying.

To spatter your ghoulish creations with blood, pour a few drops of red food colouring into a small, shallow bowl and grab an unused toothbrush. Dip the toothbrush in the red food colouring and use your thumb to spray droplets onto the uncooked meringues.

I picked one side of the meringue and aimed the line of spray at it so that it looked like it had been splattered with blood. I found this to be most effective, otherwise it kind of just looked like they’d been caught in a red rainstorm.

When your meringues are sufficiently splattered, pop them in your preheated oven for 80-85 minutes, until they’re dry on the outside and browned slightly.

These cute little meringues are perfect served by themselves, but they’d also look great as cupcake toppers. I put the hats on top of my mother’s adorable egg cups and they ended up looking like hilarious little beehive hair dos – I’m not complaining, I think they’re a fabulous addition!