Mile high Meringue

BobS

The following recipe is from the July issue of Cook's Country and as I was copying it into my recipe files, I thouht it worthwhile to share. [p]Mile High Meringue (as in 4” in the center)
Cooks Country, July 2006[p]½ cup water
1 cup sugar
4 large egg whites
pinch salt
½ tsp. cream of tarter
½ tsp. vanilla extract[p]Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 400 F.[p]Combine water and sugar in a small saucepan. Bring to a vigorous boil over medium-high heat. Once syrup comes to a rolling boil, cook 4 minutes (mixture will become slightly thick and syrupy). Remove from heat and set aside while beating whites.[p]With electric mixer, beat whites in a large bowl until frothy, about one minute. Add salt and cream of tarter and beat, gradually increasing speed to medium-high, until whites hold soft peaks, about 2 minutes.[p]With mixer running, slowly pour hot syrup into whites (avoid spilling syrup onto whisk or it will splash). Add vanilla and beat until meringue has cooled and become very thick and shiny, 5 – 9 minutes.[p]Using a rubber spatula, mound the meringue over filling, making sure meringue touches edges of crust. Use spatula to create peaks all over meringue.[p]Bake until peaks turn golden brown, about 6 minutes. Transfer to a rack and cool to room temperature.[p]Comments:
This recipe is intended to prevent the meringue from weeping (the leaching liquid from the meringue). Undercooking is the main problem – the pooling liquid is actually egg white reverting to its uncooked form.[p]For regular lemon meringue pies, the test kitchen has solved this problem by spreading the meringue over a piping-hot filling and baking in a hot oven. The hot filling cooks the bottom half of the meringue and heat from the oven takes care of the rest.[p]When using this technique, with twice the meringue, the topping disintegrated into a puddle when cut.[p]In this recipe the hot syrup cooks the whites and helps transform them into a soft smooth meringue that is stable enough to resist weeping.[p]

BobS

BobS,[p]I am not sure what happened, but when pasted into the window, the text looks fine, but when posted there are some minor changes. When looking at the ingredients, the values are correct -- just ignore the "A" with the accent mark. There are a couple places where I used a double dash "--" and that was converted into funky characters, but you should be able to understand.[p]This was pasted out of MSWord. Is there some trick I should know about?