Hey, thanks for trying it out! I'm glad you liked it! I actually just made a huge batch of the salted chocolate flavor this past weekend and I have some thoughts:
- Regarding the sweetness, I have tried to lower the sugar content in the meringue to around 200g, but have found that the meringue did not have the same pillowy set at the lower sugar level. The original meringue recipe called for 300g, so I felt like 250g was a good compromise. But if you want to try a lower sugar level, be my guest. I might suggest if you were going to use less sugar that you go with a Swiss meringue instead of an Italian meringue. Without the additional water from a sugar syrup, the Swiss meringue may be a way to preserve the pillowy meringue and use less sugar.
- One minor edit I would like to make to the original recipe is that I now exclusively use half-and-half, and no longer add butter at the end to the custard. I have found that H/H gives me the best balance between richness and smoothness, where all milk would be smooth but not rich, and majority cream would be rich but not smooth. H/H has enough fat in it that I have found adding butter is not necessary.
- Also a technical change, I no longer aggressively add the meringue to the custard as I did in the written recipe. I have realized that I like the minimal amount of lift I get from having the meringue folded in in about 2-3 additions, so I have been more gentle with bringing the mixture together. If you like that denser gelato-esque texture, then continue to combine the custard and meringue as before. If you want something a little lighter, try folding in the meringue!
