Complete Recipe Guide for Perfect Meringue Cookies
20 Days of Christmas Cookies - Day 13
Meringue Cookies Recipe
Meringue cookies are simple, versatile, and elegant. Meringue is made with 3 simple ingredients, egg whites, fine sugar, and/ or cream of tartar. There are 3 different types of meringue out there, French, Swiss and Italian meringue. Many desserts contain or are made of meringue. If you master making meringue cookies, you will find a new world to an extremely diverse dessert.
French meringue recipes call for sugar added to egg whites when they reach a soft peak. The sugar is gradually added until the whites are nice and stiff. Used in cooked meringue desserts, and although this recipe is fussy and can fail, it is the one used most often.
Swiss meringue recipes tell you to stir the sugar into the egg whites over a hot bath of water bringing them just above body temperature before they’re whipped. The meringue is denser because when you add sugar to the egg white before they’re beaten, prevents them from getting too fluffy, but makes the meringue fine and light. Usually, you will do this when topping a pie and if you want a really crisp meringue disk for a dessert.
On the other hand, the Italian meringue is started with just cooked sugar syrup. The syrup is gradually beaten into the egg whites when they reach soft peaks and then are beaten to stiff peaks. This creates a nice gloss and shine in the meringue and is used when making buttercream frosting and mousse.
Let’s talk about the ingredients. Most recipes for meringue cookies will call for caster sugar, old egg whites, and possibly cream of tartar.
Caster sugar is a specialty sugar that basically is really fine granulated sugar. You can skip buying it and make your own, by pulsing your sugar a few times in a food processor. The consistency should be between granulated and powdered sugar, just a few pulses should get you there. If you would rather buy Caster sugar, you can find it here.
The best meringue is made with old egg whites. Yes, you heard me right, old egg whites. How on earth do you get old egg whites? When you need to separate eggs and only use the yolk, our biscotti recipe, or another dessert, save the egg whites and freeze them. They keep forever and then will have them when you need them, just remember to mark how many are in there.
There are recipes for meringue cookies without cream of tartar. Before you jump on the no cream of tartar bandwagon, let’s talk about why cream of tartar is used in meringue recipes. The acidity in the cream of tartar gives stability to the meringue allowing the air whipped into the moist egg whites to stay in place and stay stiff. If you find that your meringue weeps or is too soft, it is most likely from not adding cream of tartar to your recipe, or there is too much humidity in the air. Cream of tartar is an organic acid and a good ingredient to have on hand. If you don’t have cream of tartar, you can order it here or you can substitute equal amounts of lemon juice, and white vinegar, but I would be careful because they could change the flavor of your meringue cookies. Another alternative to making meringue cookies without cream of tartar is to leave it out altogether, just understand that they may be softer and if you are piping them, not as pretty.
This recipe for meringue cookies uses cream of tartar because we are going to pipe the meringue into cute little Christmas trees, snowmen and meringue kisses. You could also use it to pipe beautiful meringue snowflakes.
Each type of meringue has its place and I encourage you to keep making meringue cookies and desserts. They are versatile, elegant and naturally gluten-free, and nut-free.
Meringue Christmas trees, snowmen and kisses
Ingredients
2 large egg whites (room temperature)
¼ tsp cream of tartar
½ cup + 1 TBSP fine sugar or caster sugar (see notes above about the fine sugar)
¼ cup powdered sugar for decorating
Chocolate Glaze Ingredients
½ pound good quality chocolate broken into pieces
3 TBSP shortening
Directions
Preheat the oven to 225 degrees fahrenheit.
Fit a 16” pastry bag with a 6B decorating tip.
Fit another 16” pastry bag with an 809 decorating tip.
Using a heavy-duty stand mixer, beat the egg whites until they just start to foam.
Add the cream of tartar and beat at medium speed.
Add 2 TBSP of sugar a little at a time until soft peaks form when the beater is raised a bit.
Add 1TBSP of sugar and increase the speed to high, continuing to beat until stiff peaks form.
At this point, add the rest of the sugar a little at a time and beat until really stiff peaks form and the egg whites shine.
In a medium bowl, add ½ of the egg white mixture and fold a few drops of green food coloring in until completely mixed, set aside.
Fill the pastry bag fitted with the 6B tip, with the white egg white mixture.
Grease 2- 11x15 inch cookie/jelly roll pans and line it with parchment paper.
Holding the bag perpendicular to the cookie sheet, squeeze the pastry bag to the count of 3 to form a kiss, repeat for more kisses.
Sprinkle the kisses with the glitter sugar.
Using the pastry bag with the 809 tip, hold the bag perpendicular to the cookie sheet, squeeze to the count of 3 forming a base for the snowman, keep the tip touching the base and pull up a bit, squeeze to the count of 3, forming another base as the snowman middle,with the tip touching the middle pull up a bit and squeeze to the count of 3 forming the snowman head. Pull the tip away swirling to form a small point that will be the snowman's hat.
Using the bag with the 6B tip, fill the green meringue, massage the bag slightly to mix the white and green meringue a little.
Holding the bag perpendicular to the cookie sheet, squeeze to the count of 3 forming a base for the Christmas tree, keep the tip touching the base and pull up a bit, squeeze to the count of 3, forming another base as the tree middle,with the tip touching the middle pull up a bit and squeeze to the count of 3 forming the top of the tree. Stop squeezing and pull the tip straight up and away from the tree.
Bake for an hour and ½, then turn the oven off, and leave the cookies in the oven overnight to dry out.
Melt the chocolate and shortening together in a double boiler on low heat, stirring constantly just until the chocolate is melted and smooth.
Let it cool, then carefully dip the top ½ of the snowman’s head into the chocolate creating the hat. Let sit until the chocolate is set.
Fill the bottom of a small baggie with the chocolate and cut off a tiny bit of the corner, and pipe the faces and the buttons on the snowman.
Dust the trees with powdered sugar for snow.