Soft vanilla meringues

Serves 4

Preheat the oven to 150°C / 300°F/gas 2 and line a baking sheet or tray with baking parchment.

Place the egg whites and sugar in a spotlessly clean bowl. Whisk, preferably using an electric mixer, until the mixture becomes meringue-like and holds stiff peaks that look like shaving foam or stiffly whipped cream. Split the vanilla pod lengthways and scrape out the seeds. With a flexible spatula, fold the seeds thoroughly and quickly into the stiff meringue.

Drop blobs of the meringue onto the paper on the baking sheet. The blobs can be as big or as small as you like. Place the tray in the preheated oven and cook for about 45 minutes. As soon as the meringues will lift off the paper with no resistance, they are ready. Turn off the oven and leave to cool, or remove and cool at room temperature. As this is a soft and quick cooking meringue, they will not keep as well as slow cooked, dry meringues, so ideally they need to be eaten on the day they are made.