Spoon & Shutter

An army of Snowy Day Meringues ready for the oven. All photos by Susan.

 

  From Susan:  If I had a snow day today, I’d make these light and luscious cookies with a candy-like sweet crunch. I made them as part of my Christmas cookie repertoire and they were so good – and so easy – I’m sure I’ll go back to them often.

If you’re not inspired to make them right away, save the recipe for the next time you have an excess of egg whites. I made the meringues on Sunday with 6 instead of the 4 specified in the recipe (left over from making my son’s birthday cake – Rose Levy Bernbaum’s yellow butter cake with strawberry filling and fudge frosting!). I adjusted the other ingredients accordingly and it make enough to fill the cookie jar and package prettily to take as a hostess gift for dinner that evening.

Chocolate, Coconut and Almond Snowdrops

1/8 teaspoon salt

4 egg whites

3/4 cup sugar

1/3 cup each toasted coconut, toasted sliced almonds and semisweet chocolate mini chips ( I had larger, bittersweet Ghirardelli chips, so just chopped those up a bit.

Preheat oven to 275 and line two baking sheets with parchment paper or Silpats.

Place the first three ingredients in the bowl of an electric mixer. Beat on high speed until foamy.  With the mixer still on high speed, add sugar one tablespoon at at time and continue to beat until stiff peaks form. Do not underbeat.

Fold almonds, coconut and chocolate into meringue mixture, combining well.

The meringue "batter."

Drop mixture by spoonfuls onto prepared sheets or, as I did, scoop it into a pastry bag without a tip and pipe it out for more of a meringue “kiss” look.

Place one pan on bottom shelf and one pan on middle shelf and bake for 30 minutes. Rotate pans and bake for another 30 minutes or until meringues are dry. Cool on wire racks.

Makes 4 dozen.

Recipe from Cooking Light magazine.