Jovi, my 9-year-old great granddaughter, is just finishing third grade. When she was in kindergarten her mom, my granddaughter Ariana asked if I would donate a homemade cake for their fundraiser at the end of the school year. I said sure. I don’t know if they hold silent auctions for the baked goods or do what our kids did when they were in school. It’s like musical chairs. You pay so much to participate, (thus raising money for the school part) then if you win, it’s your choice what fancy dessert you choose. From what I heard, Jovi (Ari) paid an outrageous price for a Red Velvet cake with Twinkie frosting, when all she had to do was ask me to make her one-for free.

That fall after her kindergarten year, I started working in a cottage kitchen for a local restaurant, 3 mornings a week. My job was baking a variety of muffins and pies. That’s it. After a few months of learning the routine (and working out the kinks) I noticed something. The number of eggs I used rivaled what the restaurant used to cook all their breakfasts. Several of the dessert recipes though just called for egg yolks. Some mornings I went through 16-24 egg yolks, which amounts to 3 plus cups of egg whites. I’d put them in a container and stick ‘em in the cooler. Boss said she was gonna make macaroons with her grandkids. After 6 weeks I’d dump the containers and start over. As far as I know she never made macaroons. Hey, she was a busy lady.

What a waste. Certainly there was something I could make using the egg whites-besides Divinity-my-favorite-candy-in-the-world, but prone to be tricky to perfect for this old cook. Still I brought some home. I love Angel food cake but had never made one from scratch. The recipe I found called for extra fine sugar and cake flour. And a sifter. I hadn’t used a sifter in 30 years, it had been long discarded in one of our moves. When I had all the necessary ingredients (and a new sifter) I made my first Angel food cake. It’s kinda of a pain, you have to sift the flour/sugar mixture together 3 freaking times, but the results were phenomenal. Absolutely delicious and worth the effort.

Mom made Angel food cake frequently (not from scratch though) when I was growing up. She made 7-minute frosting for the cake, which is kinda like divinity candy. Ironically, the frosting uses only egg whites too. But I’ve always been hesitant to make 7-minute frosting. Something my mom excelled at, I’m afraid I’d never make it as good as mom’s. So I leave my Angel food cake naked and top it with fresh strawberries and whip cream or eat it plain.

Many years ago Erika, a dear friend from Muskegon gave me a recipe for tiny meringues that she made. She’s from Austria, and the meringues had to be tinted with yellow food coloring, a custom she adhered to. She kept them in a paper bag. For months. Yup, they stay fresh for an extended period of time. Her recipe was labor intensive, like putting a dish of hot water under the mixer bowl to help dissolve all the sugar the recipe called for. But if I was gonna tackle meringues I wanted to use a lot of whites and make a boatload in one setting. So I tweaked a couple recipes and use one that suits my needs.

Began making meringues every couple weeks and handing them out to our kids and grands. Fell behind keeping up with all the egg whites and started freezing and dating the containers. I would have bet my grandson with allergies (but not allergic to eggs!) would have latched onto both the Angel food cake and meringues, but alas, he’s not crazy about either one. My other grandson loves them and finds sneaky ways to keep them hidden from his family!

When Jovi was in first grade I made a batch of meringues instead of a cake for the now cake-less walk. (The meringues are the size of a quarter, looks like a Hershey star and each batch makes 300-400). Colored each batch a different pastel, mixed them up when I boxed them. They looked so stinking cute. But after the first year I stopped dyeing the meringues. Many parents are against artificial colors in their kids food and snacks and I get that. Just plain white ones since then. Well they sold like hotcakes at the cake (less) walk. Second grade I upped the ante to around 2,000 meringues. I bought several 30 ounce Hefty plastic containers with domed lids at Sam’s Club. I can fit around 50 in each container. Ari set up a separate “Meringue” table and they sold out in minutes. This year my goal was 4,000 meringues which would amount to 80 containers. Ambitious ‘ya think? Started about 2 weeks before the event, making a batch almost every day.

I had several gallon plastic tubs on top of the fridge filled with meringues (they do take some room) and still more to make and bake so I washed 90 Hefty containers and took a day to fill, pack and store them in the spare bedroom. I stopped counting containers after 70, but think my total was fairly close to the 4,000 mark I was striving for. Ari & Jovi came over for supper and hauled all the boxes to the car with a promise that she wouldn’t leave them in her car for 2 days before the cake (less) walk. (Humidity is not meringues friend).

Sold every box.

I brought a container of meringues to physical therapy recently. I don’t think anyone had ever had tasted them before. “What’s in this? How do you make them? How many calories? What do you use to make the design? They kinda taste like crunchy marshmallows.”

“Well, meringues are Angel food cake without flour…”