Chocolate meringue cookies

With the purchase of a new kitchenaid mixer, I was excited to make something that involved its use. Hence, I chose to make chocolate meringue cookies because whipping egg whites was not something I could do in the absence of the mixer. Believe me, I tried!

I'll post the end product at the end of this post. You'll understand why when you see it.

I browsed one of my favourite recipe sites, allrecipes, for a nice meringue cookie recipe.

Here is the following recipe. It had a nice high rating, and it seemed rather easy.

Chocolate meringue cookies

Ingredients:
3 egg whites
1/8 tsp cream of tartar (to stabilize the egg whites)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2.3 cup white sugar
1 tbs cocoa powder, unsweetened
1/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.
2. Combine egg whites, cream of tartar and vanilla and beat until egg whites form soft peaks. Slowly add sugar, and beat until stiff peaks form.
3. Fold in cocoa powder and chocolate chips
4. Drop mixture in teaspoonfuls onto a cookie sheet and bake for 25-30 minutes.

Changes that I made:
1. I forgot to add the chocolate chips.
2. I piped the meringue instead of spooning it onto a cookie sheet
3. I didn't have parchment paper, so I used foil instead, greasing it with a bit of oil.

Everything was looking good as I prepared the cookie mixture:



However, the end result was this poo-like blobs on a cookie sheet.


I'll have to admit that my piping techniques are minimal. You can see that I tried piping it in different ways, but they all look like poo. Ken came home from work and exclaimed "Why are you baking mini-craps*?" My little critics regarded them suspiciously. Taste-wise though, they were light and fluffy with a bit of chocolate taste. They didn't melt in my mouth though.

So in the end, I doubt I'll make these again. It was fun making them though. Perhaps next time I'll skip the cocoa powder and make a meringue pie. Now I have to figure out what to do with 3 dozen little poo's.


*Obviously, Ken didn't say "crap", but said "sh**", but let's keep this blog clean, shall we?