Day 7

I'm not feeling so good this evening, my dears, so the challenge is on hold for (hopefully) just today. However, some of you may have noticed over the past week or so, that I've made a fair number of dishes requiring just egg yolks. Yesterday I decided to make meringue cookies. Not just any meringue cookies though, lemon meringue cookies. So, I thought I would share the recipe, since my boss this morning deemed them "Lemony, but not too lemony."

6 egg whites
1 1/2 cups of castor sugar or pulverized sugar (icing sugar is not recommended though)
3/4 tsp of cream of tartar
the seeds of about 1/2-3/4" of a vanilla bean or 1 tsp of vanilla extract
juice and zest of half a lemon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Let the whites come to room temperature, dump them into a stand mixer or mix them with a hand mixer or if you're strong whip them with a whisk (whip it good!) [Sorry couldn't resist the Devo joke.] I put the lemon in at this point, just the juice, I put the zest in later. I begin the whipping of egg whites on a medium low type speed so as to not spray myself or the kitchen with egg whites. After, they have begun to get some shape to them I crank it up to 11.

Just medium actually.

After they have become frothy, add in the cream of tartar & and then whip them some more until they form soft peaks. Soft ones are the ones that have some shape but usually fall over. Add in the zest and vanilla bean/extract now. At this point, very gradually add in the sugar approximately 1 tablespoon at a time and let each amount get incorporated before adding in more. Once stiff peaks have formed, the ones that don't fall over, you're ready.

Put them into a piping bag with a star tip or whatever your favorite icing shape is and pipe them onto parchment paper or tin foil. Or if you're lazy like me, glop them onto the paper/foil with a spoon. Just make sure they are all relatively the same size.

After the oven reaches 350 degrees, turn it off. Put the meringues in for 20 minutes and then turn the oven back on to 200 degrees for approximately 45-60 minutes. It really depends on how big you made the cookies. You'll want to try for an every so slightly golden brown cookie but it needs to be dry. The other way you can do it is to heat your oven up to 350, turn it off, put the cookies in, and leave them alone for a few hours...I'm too impatient for this and I wanted cookies much sooner than that.

I only have one picture of the cookies, sitting pretty in my cookie container.