I don't usually use my microwave for much besides reheating leftovers, popping popcorn, and occasionally boiling water when I'm too lazy to actually, you know, light the gas burner on the stovetop (oh, believe me, it happens). Besides making brownies in a mug or microwave pancakes in a jar, did you know you can nuke some meringues in your microwave?

Meringues are one of the most bewitchingly beautiful dessert treats of all time. By themselves, they're a piece of airy sugary goodness; add some fruit and they transcend. But—they're also notorious for taking forever. Done traditionally, they take hours in a barely-hot oven.

Guess what? They don't have to.

The kitchen beast known as the reactor—aka microwave—saves the day on this note. The old-school method of making meringues takes a good bit of technique as well as time; this version, brought to us by Naomi Imatone-Yun over at WonderHowTo.com, takes less than ten minutes overall.

The ingredients are a simple: 2 1/2 cups of powdered sugar and one egg white. Imatone-Yun suggests the "bottle method" of separating the egg; you can opt for using a regular egg separator and it will work just fine. Mix the egg white and the sugar until you have a sticky dough. Form the dough into walnut-size blobs (that's the technical term, obviously), put them on a paper towel on a microwave-safe dish and nuke for about a minute. Be sure to leave a good bit of room between your blobs, though--these little suckers expand to about three times their original size. Let them cool and dry for at least a minute before serving.

Your end result? A delightful, elegant confection in the realm of the finest French style, and all done with your trusty microwave. You might want to do a couple of trial-and-error runs, depending on your microwave's power level. This is a recipe well worth your experimentation: even if they don't come out quite perfectly the first time around, you'll have fun eating the "mistakes."

Microwave Meringues Make You a Genius Cook Without Even Trying