Making Vanilla Meringue Cookies

Meringues are an French dessert that only consists of 3 ingredients. Egg whites, sugar and a tiny bit of vanilla extract. This dessert is a light, delicate cookie that crunches immediately after you put it in your mouth. I remembered the first time I tried this delicacy, my taste buds were dancing around. I never knew there was a cookie that tasted so good and was so easy to make. I’ve been wanting to make it after I got a taste of it in my culinary arts class, but due to my busy schedule and the amount of school work, I had to make this during my break. I thought this would be a good dessert to make for my IRP. So today I made these delicate cookies and I am going to teach you all how to make it too.

Ingredients

4 egg whites                  2/3cups of fine white sugar               1tsp of vanilla extract

Steps:

“Ensure that the bowl you use when whisking is scrupulously clean. The smallest amount of oil, grease or egg yolk will contaminate the eggs and they won’t fluff up, this also applies to the whisk you are using” (Paul, Treuille 165). This is truly important because many people will think a little bit of yolk and grease won’t affect the mixture, but they are important to avoid because they can really affect the egg white, causing it not to form into a meringue. A way I like to separate the egg whites from the yolk is to use the shell. It can be also done by hand but I find that not as sanitary. “Crack the egg over a bowl, tip the yolk back and forth between the 2 shell halves, allowing the white to fall into the bowl below (Paul, Treuille 159).

Figure 2

Figure 1

As you can tell by the ingredients, this cookie is really easy to make. All you need to do is add the vanilla to the egg whites and start beating. After one minute of beating, when the egg white starts bubbling, add the sugar gradually and start beating the meringue on high speed. After 5-6 minutes, check to see if the meringue has reach the stiff peak stage. After that you can put it in a pastry bag       and start piping.

This is the point where you can get super creative. You can add food coloring and sprinkles to make your cookies more appealing, also you can pipe different shapes and sizes of cookies using different piping tips. In figure 2, I included different shapes of meringue cookies you can do. To make my cookie simple, I did not add any food coloring and I choose a round tip for this. Based on different techniques you use you can create different shapes using the same tip. In picture 1 above, I made a tear drop shape and a dome shaped cookie.

What are your guy’s favorite type of cookies and why? Which shape of the meringues do you like from figure 2?