Meringue and baking fail

I was craving something sweet last night, took inventory of my fridge and pantry and went on a hunt for applicable recipes. I discovered meringue cookies. Egg whites, salt, sugar, lemon, cream of tartar. Excellent! I had everything but the cream of tartar, but I assumed that I could substitute lemon (which was confirmed by several websites).

The one thing that was called for that I did NOT have was a glass or metal bowl. For all of my mixing needs, I have a nice set of melamine bowls. It may be time to replace them. Apparently, plastic and melamine can retain oils even after cleaning, which will cause a meringue to fall or not even form (which makes sense: meringue becomes stiff due to the whipping action breaking the hydrogen bonds in the egg protein. Whipping also introduces air, so the whole thing becomes a volumized air suspension. Oil, even in miniscule amounts, will break the surface tension, reducing everything to a gooey mess).

Needless to say, I was left with that gooey mess. In an effort to not let the eggs go to waste, I dumped in some wheat gluten and some leftover white flour that I had sitting around, added some baking powder, pupped into muffin cups and baked. The result: Flat, rubber cupcakes. Considering the fact that I LIKE chewy things, the texture was perfect. That flavor? Not so perfect. I don't think I rinsed the soap from my baking cups welle nough. That, and the fact that the flour I had used was very, very old lent a lovely stale quality.

Next time, I'll use metal bowls and avoid this horror!