Soft and billowy or sweet and crisp, meringue is a chameleon in the kitchen: Use it as a dreamy-textured dessert topping, a magic mix-in that gives rise to dense cakes or puddings or other desserts, and, baked, as crisp, cookielike crumbles that lend crunch to all sorts of pastry-chef creations.

It's made of modest ingredients — stiffly beaten egg whites and sugar at its most basic — and with seemingly endless variations it changes shape, volume and texture, bending to the will of its maker.

Soft meringue can be squeezed through a pastry bag and molded into the desired shape, then baked into wafers and hollow shells. Replace the sugar with hot syrup and the result will be clouds of thick, glossy, almost marshmallowlike confection — technically termed Italian meringue — which can be anything from a frosting to a baked dessert in its own right. Add chunks of cold butter to that and you've got lush Italian buttercream (this is what pastry chefs mean when they say buttercream; not the simple butter/confectioners' sugar mixture that home cooks know by that name).

Slightly toasted clouds of the stuff give lemon meringue pie its whimsical wow factor. For a crunchy bite, it can be piped and baked into French macaroons, often with dried coconut added, perfect for sandwiching dollops of chocolate ganache or jam.

(An important thing to know is that humidity is the enemy of baked meringue shells, so they can be tricky to make in Hawai'i if you don't have a controlled-temperature kitchen. Don't even attempt them on a particularly hot and humid day. One way to assure that the meringues set up and dry out to attain a crisp texture is to bake them as suggested in the particular recipe; turn off heat at the end of the cooking time and leave them in the oven to dry for several hours or overnight. Another tip: Meringues have a tendency to stick to the baking pan, and it's not recommended to grease or oil-spray the pan as this throws off the taste and texture. So, line the baking sheet with paper — baking parchment or a brown paper bag, cut to fit the baking sheet.)

Pastry chef Sherry Yard folds soft meringue into kaiserschmarren, a popular Austrian dessert that's been a fixture on the menu at her home base Spago (the original one, in Beverly Hills) since the restaurant's inception. Chef Wolfgang Puck, she says, calls her "Miss Meringue." "At Spago, we make all of our pasta from scratch with egg yolks, so I'm always looking for new ways to play with egg whites."

Kaiserschmarren is traditionally made from torn pieces of caramelized pancake sauteed and served with fruit compote and powdered sugar. Yard elevates hers by adding soft white cheese, creme fraiche, raisins plumped in wine and sugar, and a generous amount of sweetened, whipped egg whites. Baked in a deep cake pan, the result is a fluffy, puddinglike dessert, more springy than a souffle and perfect for sopping up strawberry sauce.

"Meringue allows me to cut out flour in a lot of desserts and make them lighter," Yard says. "It's just about my favorite thing to work with."

Chef Michel Richard of Citronelle, a James Beard Award-winning Washington, D.C. restaurant, uses crisp meringue to make vacherin, a French invention that houses ice cream or whipped cream or both in a molded meringue. Richard shapes his meringue into the form of a big mushroom using separate molds for the cap and stem, fills the baked shells with chocolate ice cream and whipped cream, and sets the whole thing atop a pool of pistachio sauce.

"I love the texture of the meringue this way, crisp," Richard says. "You add the creamy ice cream, the sauce, the whipped cream. It is wonderful to bite into all of the textures at once."

Meringue does double duty in a meringue-topped lemon sponge cake: Beaten egg whites lighten the lemon and butter cake batter, which is baked until tender and just set. A generous amount of Italian meringue goes on top.

Mastering Italian meringue — whipped egg whites into which a heated sugar-water syrup is beaten — takes a bit of practice. When the sugar melts, the syrup must reach 240 degrees; any hotter and it will become thick and viscous. Timing is essential: The syrup must be streamed very slowly into the whites while they are being beaten or it will not be fully incorporated.

French meringue, the easily thrown together blend of egg whites and sugar that gives dessert souffles their lift, can easily be manipulated into a variety of light but impressive treats. Make wafers perfect for tea time by blending finely chopped hazelnuts, vanilla and lemon juice into the meringue; bake spoonfuls of it on a lined sheet pan at a low temperature until they are dry and crisp. Or place a scoop of orange sherbet between two of the wafers and you have a refreshing twist on an ice cream sandwich.

Shape fluffs of meringue into cups or bowls before baking and you've got individual, beautiful Pavlovas. And as Richard puts it: "You don't even need a pastry bag."