Homemade Vegan Mallomars

Hallelujah, it's a wrap! It took me no less than four months to develop and shoot this recipe. At some point, I stopped counting my attempts (it must have been around ten) and often had to think of Julia's Baumkuchen-Odyssee. You see, the thing about mallomars is: They consist of 97% beaten egg whites. For our vegan version, the egg whites are replaced with aquafaba, the water from chickpeas. We give you more details about this here. Unfortunately, aquafaba does not behave 1:1 like an egg. In confectionery and patisserie recipes, a lot of sensitivity, know-how, and experience are required. This is true artisanship. To all pastry chefs: I salute you all. My first attempts with hot sugar syrup and agar agar always melted away in front of my eyes before I could coat them with chocolate (yes, my baker's heart broke each time). So I've discarded that approach (for now) and instead proceed as the following:

1. Reduce the aquafaba by two-thirds on the stove, as this makes it more concentrated, loses water, and becomes more like egg whites.
2. Whip the mass over a hot water bath.
3. In addition, I use cream of tartar, as it provides extra stability.
4. Between each step (adding powdered sugar, cream of tartar, ...) whip the mass for at least 10 minutes.
5. Work fast when piping the mixture! We put the beaten aquafaba mass in a piping bag and transferred it directly to the already prepared wafer bases. Speed is required here so that the vegan mallomars do not lose their shape.
6. Melt the chocolate glaze together with coconut oil – we are looking for a runny consistency. Because the chocolate coating keeps the malomars in their shape, a too-thick glaze will flatten them down.

By the way, we cut the vegan wafer bases with a round cookie cutter (ø 5 cm / 2 inch) from flat wafer sheets. You can find these online, or if you're lucky, in Turkish or Russian supermarkets or gourmet food sections. However, not all of those are vegan, so double-check the ingredient list. Instead of wafers, you can just as easily use vegan cookies or simply small rice cakes.
These are the technical details. What's essential for me left to say is this: Please don't despair if you don't succeed with this recipe right on the first attempt. As I said, it took me many tries before they were a winner. Aquafaba is a diva, don't get frustrated. If it doesn't work right away, try again. And the good news is, even failed malomars taste delicious. I promise!