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Meringue: Hard (Swiss) Meringue Tips

Source of Recipe

AEB
For preparation, General Meringue Tips
1. Hard or Swiss, meringue is usually made with 4 tablespoons sugar per egg white and is beaten until stiff peaks form.
2. You can bake hard meringues on a baking sheet lightly greased with unsalted shortening, butter or oil, or lined with waxed, brown or parchment paper or foil. American Egg Board testing has found meringues stick least on sheets coated with paper or foil and that both shortening and butter are preferable to oil, though any of these may be used. Nonstick surfaces do require lining or greasing.
3. To form practical or fanciful shapes, pipe meringue with a pastry bag or gently shape it with a spoon or spatula. With minimal shaping, you can also simply bake hard meringue in a lightly greased pie plate, cake pan or springform pan.
4. Hard meringues are not actually baked, but are dried in a 225° F oven for 1 to 1 1/2 hours. They then spend at least another hour basking in the heat with the oven off – a process which keeps them from browning. While generally baked until crisp and dry throughout, a shorter baking time will produce a more chewy, marshmallow-like center. For a light golden hue, bake at 250° F until the center reaches 160° F and is chewy or crisp, as you like. Oven-baked meringues turn golden brown at the tips; microwaved meringues remain white. Both are fluffy, tender, glossy and smooth with a fine-grained texture.
5. Fully baked hard meringues may be stored for months in a tightly sealed container with waxed paper between any layers. If they should lose crispness, bake in a preheated 250° F oven for 15 to 20 minutes.
6. In hard meringues, egg whites robe pure sugar in a mantle of respectability. To keep them from being cloying to the average sweet tooth, hard meringues are often most successfully served with tart fruits or fruit-flavored fillings, such as Key lime pie filling or lemon curd. A puffy hard meringue has a relatively smooth but crisp crust with little to no browning from the long, slow baking process. The interior may be crisp or creamy/chewy as a marshmallow depending on the meringue’s size and the length of baking. If you bake hard meringue until crisp and dry, it forms an Angel Pie when made in a pie plate or becomes Forgotten Cookies or Meringue Kisses when dropped from a spoon. You can also form hard-meringue into a pie-crust shape or tart shells to hold fruit or pudding. When you bake hard meringue in a cake or springform pan just until the outside becomes crisp, but the inside is still creamy/chewy and then top it with fruit and whipped cream, it becomes Pavlova or Schaum Torte. Just as for soft (pie) meringue, you can also poach hard meringue to make Floating Islands.