When they’re not rushing round looking after their eight children, friends Wendy Withers and Katy Taylor are rustling up amazing flavoured meringues, says Sarah Willcocks.

INDULGENT desserts with zero fat? It sounds too good to be true.

But two single mums from Teesdale have reinvented the meringue with their new business venture Wham Bam Meringue.

With eight children between them, both Wendy Withers and Katy Taylor’s multi-tasking skills are well honed. Now Wendy single-handedly manufactures all the meringues in her Gainford home, making as many as 2,000 a week.

“We had all the tests done so that we can use Wendy’s kitchen. It’s a good sized, normal domestic kitchen, but it allows her to work at home with the children being in and out,” says Katy, who became friends with Wendy through doing the school run.

“We split how we run the business according to our skills,” explains Katy. “I do the website, bookings, accounts and the talking. Wendy does the manufacturing.”

Fitting work around the children is part of the business’s appeal, allowing Katy to work late at night if necessary, catching up on emails or invoicing. The longest days are those when the creative duo are working at food festivals.

“We travel all over the North of England,” says Katy. “We start early in the morning and work all day. But one advantage of being a single mum is that the kids can stay with their dad at the weekends.”

Katy adds: “I employ the kids where I can. My daughter is 14 so helping with the business has become her part-time job.”

IN the past six months since launching Wham Bam Meringue, Katy and Wendy may well have eaten more meringues than most people would in a lifetime. “We do have to do a bit of quality control,” laughs Katy. “Fortunately, they are not stodgy or sickly so you can eat quite a few them. My kids have to eat the broken ones and they have been known to say, ‘Oh no, not more meringues!’”

The idea first came to Katy and Wendy last year on a day out to Hartlepool’s Tall Ships Race. “We tried meringues from a stall there and while they looked really pretty, they tasted bland. Meringues never used to be my favourite thing. The ones from the supermarket are often dry and dusty. I wanted to make meringues that tasted better,” says Katy.

Unusually, the two friends wrote their business plan on a flight to New York where they were heading for a long weekend to celebrate Wendy’s birthday. “We had talked before about wanting to work for ourselves.

We both wanted to be more financially independent and have more control over our income. We mulled our idea over for ages. But the sixhour flight actually gave us the opportunity to sit down together for a long period of time and work out a strategy.”

“We couldn’t figure out why no one had thought of it before,” Katy says.

“I think people must have quite a set idea about what a meringue is. We found the odd recipe for flavoured meringues, but no one was doing it for a business.”

From the start, Katy and Wendy were clear that they wanted to use local free-range eggs and Fairtrade sugar for their hand-baked meringues. And they also try to use biodegradable packaging to keep the business as green as possible.

They are currently selling through farmers’ markets and food festivals, as well as supplying meringue-based desserts to local restaurants such as the Voodoo Café, in Darlington, and Wendy’s local, The Lord Nelson, in Gainford.

“We have just had great weekends at York and Halifax Food Festivals,” says Katy whose high point was having celebrity chef Jean-Christophe Novelli as the warm-up act for her baking demo at Halifax. “I was quite intimidated by the size of his audience and the stage was big too. It was the mobile set for Ready Steady Cook. I nearly fell down the stairs when he kissed me on the cheek.”

There’s never a dull moment, but when the schedule allows, Katy makes time to invent new recipes.

Her experiments with different ingredients have led to the creation of colourful meringues appealing to different tastes, including vanilla, lemon, chocolate and coffee. Among Wendy and Katy’s favourite creations are bespoke wedding “cakes” and their celebration range also includes canapes, favours and centrepieces.

“We bake meringues the size of fairy cakes, and pile them up on a cake stand in a pyramid shape, then pour fruit coulis over the top,” explains Katy. “It’s a nice feeling knowing the meringues you’ve made are going somewhere special. We did a couple of weddings recently where we made bite-sized strawberry canapes for the guests to have with champagne. I like the idea of my meringues going off for a party.”

The hardest part of the business is finding the time. “There’s the housework, children’s homework, and all the usual needs of children to be met. Plus both Wendy and I are very involved with community projects,” says Katy. “And, just occasionally, we have a social life. The biggest challenge is fitting it all in.”

􀁧􀁧 Wham Bam Meringue will be at Barnard Castle Farmers’ Market on the first Saturday of each month; Living North Christmas Fair at Croft Circuit from November 11 to 13; Darlington Christmas Market on December 10 and 11, and Bowes Christmas Market on December 18.

􀁧􀁧 whambammeringue.co.uk; email: whambammeringue@live.co.uk or call Katy Taylor on 01325-730704.