meringue

December 10: Meringue Stars

amazon cookies
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After my humiliating defeat in the world off egg whites last week, I knew I had to pull myself together and remind myself (and all of you) that I do know how to do this.

I’ve been making these so long, I decided it’s okay to change the name. In the beginning, they were supposed to be snowflakes or wreaths, and let’s just say my piping skills weren’t quite developed yet. But stars. Stars I could do. One plop. Hard to screw up.

I was hoping the same could be said for these. Fingers crossed!

Meringue Stars

  • 4 egg whites
  • 1 1/2 c. powdered sugar
  • 1 t. almod extract
  • 1/2 t. ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 t. cream of tartar
  • sanding sugar
  1. Cover baking sheets with parchment/wax paper.
  2. In a large bowl, beat egg whites until foamy. Add powdered sugar, almond extract, cinnamon, and cream of tartar; beat until very stiff.
  3. Spoon meringue into a pastry bag fitted with a start tip. Plop stars on to wax/parchment paper. Decorate with sanding sugar
  4. Let sit at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Yeah, that’s the way meringue is supposed to be.

meringue cookies

My pride is restored.

The best and most surprising part of this recipe is the cinnamon. It’s subtle, and sets it apart from the rest of the Christmas cookies on the platter. Shout out to Penzey’s Spices, btw. I love that place.

Penzey's Spices

After filling the pastry bag, start plopping away. You can really make any shape you like, but like I said earlier, I found stars to be the most simple. I broke out my gold sanding sugar and had the Christmas cookies looking pretty darn festive.

meringue cookies

When they are dry, put them in an airtight container and hide them from your kids. These are my kids’ favorites!

December 4: Peppermint Meringues

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I will start off by saying, no one’s perfect.

I made the Peppermint Meringues from the current Food Network magazine, and had a lot of trouble with them. Actually, nine times out of ten when I’ve made cookies from Food Network magazine, I’ve had trouble.

I’m not a baking novice by any stretch of the imagination, and if I were, this recipe would discourage me and make me think I just wasn’t cut out for baking cookies.

Again, no one is perfect. I certainly screw up. Even with cookies. At least once a year while I do my 24 days of cookies, one batch doesn’t work.

This is that batch.

I make meringue cookies every year band have been doing so since Britney rocked a belly chain and low-rise jeans. I know the concept. So when my meringue didn’t set up (using the directions exactly as written), I was perplexed.

And then I started over. This time, I used powdered sugar instead of granular. While it wasn’t as bad as the first batch, it definitely wasn’t up to my meringue standards. That was the first problem.

My second problem came when trying to paint the red stripes in the pastry bag. It’s tough to do, and I ended up using an unused paint brush from my arts and crafts collection. I tried a pastry brush before this, and it looked like a crime scene. It was too big, and the plastic pastry bag isn’t exactly the easiest surface to paint on.

Novice bakers aren’t going to necessarily know to try something else. Heck, I really didn’t know what to do. I totally winged it.

I piped the shapes on the parchment, and because it was a limp and runny meringue, the consistency was off. But I figured I’d try and see what happened. The red stripes did come through, but as I piped more, the color wasn’t as strong. This makes sense to me, but the photo editors at Food Network magazine didn’t get the memo that their picture was to actually look like the cookies their readers would be creating.

After the hour in the oven, I turned off the oven and had them sit in the oven for another 2 hours. As the directions state.

When I took them out, I was again not pleased.

Brown. My white runny meringues spent too long in the tanning bed before prom, and didn’t look like what they were supposed to look like. That was the final problem with this recipe.

Did anyone else make this recipe and have it turn out well? Because at this point, I’m not actually convinced anyone at the magazine tested this recipe.

December 14: Meringue Cookies

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Note: I got behind because of illness.. Now that I can at least sit upright for more than a few hours, I am catching up. But with that, these are going to be more bare-bones than in the past.

Snowflake Meringue Cookies
(from The Spirit of Christmas Cookbook, Volume 4)

Ingredients:

4 egg whites
1 1/2 c. powdered sugar
1 t. almond extract
1/2 t. ground cinnamon
1/2 t. cream of tartar
decorating sugar

Directions:

1. Cover baking sheets with waxed paper.
2. In a large bowl, beat egg whites until foamy. Add powdered sugar, almond extract, cinnamon, and cream of tartar; beat until very stiff.
3. Spoon meringue into a pastry bag fitted with a small star tip. Make snowflake design. Add decorating sugars.
4. Let sit at room temperature for 30 minutes.

I think these may be my kids’ favorites all around. They ask about them more than another cookie. When they smell the batter in the air, suddenly they are three obedient kids who get along fabulously and do any chore I ask of them.

I did something a little different this year. At the end, I put a little gold or white sprinkle pearl at the top of them, just for a little pizazz. And they stuck!

So maybe when these disappear, my kids will at least feel fancier as they snarf them down.

December 9: Meringue Cookies

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We had a busy day today. Or it at least seemed busy. We had pretty much one thing to do today, and it was at 4, but somehow the day got away from me. It was 2 before I started the cookies, which is why this post is a little later than normal. 

My kids love meringue cookies, especially these, and so do I . It’s something with the cinnamon in it, I think. These are a staple in our home at Christmas, well until they all get eaten. They go pretty quickly. 

To start these cookies, you need four egg whites. I found a new method for separating eggs earlier this month, and it works really well. Yes, I use my hand.

After the egg whites are frothy, I add the almond extract, cinnamon, cream of tartar, and powdered sugar. I keep whipping them until there are stiff peaks. 

This is not a stiff peak.

This is a stiff peak. 

Then comes the fun part…loading the decorating bag with gobs of sticky meringue. Thankfully, there were no casualties this year.

It always takes me a few tries before I find my rhythm. For this batch, I found it easier to put the tip on the cookie sheet, rather than start it above where I wanted it. To me, it looks more like snowflakes like this. After I piped them all, I found different colored sugars and shook them over the snowflake globs. I used a shimmery white, light blue, and gold, but you really can only see the gold. It’s cool; I know it’s there. 

I left for the 4 pm band concert at 3 (hey, those seats aren’t going to save themselves) and left the cookie sheets out to dry. When I came back at 6, they were no dryer than when I left, so I popped them in a 210 degree oven for about 25 minutes, and that seemed to do the trick.

Snowflake Meringue Cookies
(from The Spirit of Christmas Cookbook, Volume 4)

Ingredients:

4 egg whites
1 1/2 c. powdered sugar
1 t. almond extract
1/2 t. ground cinnamon
1/2 t. cream of tartar
decorating sugar

Directions:

1. Cover baking sheets with waxed paper.
2. In a large bowl, beat egg whites until foamy. Add powdered sugar, almond extract, cinnamon, and cream of tartar; beat until very stiff.
3. Spoon meringue into a pastry bag fitted with a small star tip. Make snowflake design. Add decorating sugars.
4. Let sit at room temperature for 30 minutes.