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Plant-based food blogger Carleigh Bodrug—author of the PlantYou cookbook—is best known for her "Scrappy Cooking" series, which focuses on transforming common food scraps into delicious recipes that don't break the bank. For our "Keep or Toss" episode, she made these wonderful four-ingredient vegan cookies using the leftover canned chickpea water, or aquafaba, from her Smashed Chickpea Salad Sandwiches

Aquafaba works great as a vegan egg replacement in these meringues, as well as mousses, buttercreams, mayo and lots of other recipes, and you can't taste the difference. So, the next time you open a can of chickpeas, keep that water, don't toss it! 

Ingredients

  • ½ cup aquafaba (the liquid from canned chickpeas)
  • ¼ teaspoon cream of tartar
  • ⅓ cup white sugar
  • ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract

Yield

Serves: Makes about 30

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 250°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. 

Add the aquafaba and cream of tartar to a bowl. Using a handheld mixer or a stand mixer, beat until the liquid begins to foam, about 2 to 3 minutes. 

While continuing to mix, gradually add the sugar to the bowl, then the vanilla. Continue mixing until you achieve stiff peaks with your meringue. 

Scoop the meringue into a piping bag and pipe into approximately 30 meringue-shaped cookies. Alternatively, use a tablespoon to scoop out the meringue onto the baking sheet into cookie shapes. 

Bake until the cookies have set and are slightly browned, about 1 ½ hours. Allow them to cool completely before storing in an airtight container for up to 1 week.