Bored With Whipped Cream? Add Meringue To Your Hot Chocolate

When whipping up a cozy cup of hot chocolate, half the fun is choosing what toppings you'll add to your drink. Many times, marshmallows, candy canes, and whipped cream are goodies that we reach for. However, rather than sticking with the standard hot cocoa toppings, why not mix things up a bit and use meringue instead?

Similar to whipped cream, meringue is light and airy and can balance out some of the heaviness of thicker hot chocolates. Plus, it's got a fluffy texture reminiscent of marshmallow fluff that melts in your mouth when you eat it. It also pairs well with variations of this beverage, such as a lemon or white hot chocolate.

So, do you want to give this topping a shot? First, you need to know what kind of meringue you'll use. Then, there are a couple of different ways that you can adorn your hot beverage with this tasty topping to get the perfect sweet hot drink.

If you want to use this topping on your hot chocolate, you should know that there are different types of meringue out there. Swiss meringue, for instance, is made by whisking sugar and egg whites over a warm water bath. Then, the meringue is taken off the heat and beaten until it's doubled in size. This meringue tends to be smooth and a bit dense.

Then there's Italian meringue, which involves first making a simple sugar syrup. Then, that syrup gets poured into whipped egg whites to create the meringue. This meringue is the most stable. Finally, there's French meringue, which is the lightest and airiest meringue and consists of egg whites and sugar whipped together into peaks. 

You can use whichever of these meringues you'd like to top your hot cocoa, but some are going to be more time-consuming than others. Additionally, the meringue's texture will vary slightly depending on which variety you use, so keep this in mind as well.

Once you've selected and made a batch of meringue, it's time to think about actually putting it on your hot chocolate. First, you have to choose if you're going to add it to your hot chocolate raw or bake it into solid meringue cookies. If you bake it, you can pipe small kisses, spirals, or circles onto a baking tray, then bake them and use the resulting cookies as a floating hot chocolate topper. You can also use this option to create colorful meringue cookies that match with holidays.

Alternatively, you can skip the baking and just pipe the meringue onto your beverage to give it a pretty shape, playing around with different piping tips to add unique designs. Or, you can simply use a spoon to add dollops of it to your hot chocolate. Then finish the whole thing off by using a mini blow torch to slightly cook the meringue and add a golden color to the top of it — like you'd do with a lemon meringue pie topping. Whichever method you use, next time you make hot chocolate, you've got a unique way to top your drink that doesn't involve the standard marshmallows or whipped cream!