Lately, I've developed a fascination with separating eggs. Is that weird? It's such a delicate act, and so important to get right if you're going to be whipping up the egg whites into a meringue. Say, for a souffle (which I've been practicing but haven't gotten quite right), or for meringue cookies. Mmmm.
After a lot of searching, I finally found a meringue cookie recipe that only called for a minimal amount of ingredients. Two, to be exact. Egg whites and powdered sugar. Here's the original recipe, but I'm including my slightly modified directions here, too.
Start with two eggs at room temperature. Separate the yolks from the whites. Toss the yolks (or save them for something else). Aren't empty egg shells pretty?
Measure out one cup of powdered sugar. In the right bowl are the 2 egg whites.
Whip the egg whites on a medium speed until foamy. This should only take a few minutes.
Slowly add in the powdered sugar a little bit at a time, while continuing to mix on a medium speed.
Continue whipping until the mixture is glossy and stiff peaks form. For me, this took about 10 minutes. The mixture should stay put if you hold the mixing bowl upside down.
Preheat your oven to 200° F, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Fill a pastry bag with the meringue (or use a plastic baggie with a corner snipped off, like I did).
The fun part! Pipe the meringue onto the parchment-lined baking sheet.
The meringue makes about 2 dozen cookies. (That's about 20 calories per cookie – not so bad.)
My makeshift pastry bag got verrrry sticky and messy. For the last couple, I used a spoon instead.
After baking at 200° F for 90 minutes, the cookies came out a pale peachy color, crisp on the outside, and soft and chewy on the inside.
I'm not sure why they pulled apart along the bottom and got kinda sugary-bubbly. But I kind of like them that way, imperfectly perfect.
So yummy. But I'm also itching to experiment with flavors. Just imagine: coffee meringue cookies! Raspberry meringue cookies! Hazelnut meringue cookies!
Again, all you need is two ingredients: 2 egg whites and 1 cup of powdered sugar. Whip, pipe, and bake, and you'll have about two dozen delicious bite-sized snacks.
