
Meringue cookies are an easy and fun little dessert for any gathering, they’re an excellent project for kids, and they also make a lovely dessert for adults! I baked them for Halloween and piped these cute little ghosts, and during Christmas with some additional peppermint extract. You can make any shape, color, or design, and decorate them with sprinkles too. Scroll down to see a variety of ways you can pipe them. All it takes are just egg whites and icing sugar to create these versatile treats. If you live in a hot and humid country like me, your meringue cookies may get sticky, so I made the cooked version over a hot water bath to avoid that stickiness. It takes out the guesswork and tries to get it right. Here is the recipe.
Meringue Cookies
Ingredients
- 113 g icing sugar
- 2 large egg whites
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 80°C
- Line a sheet pan with baking (parchment) paper.
- Fill a medium pot with about 3 inches (about 7.5 cm) of water and bring to a simmer.
- In a heatproof bowl (or the metal bowl of a stand mixer), stir together the sugar and egg whites.
- Place the bowl on top of the pot of simmering water. The bowl should sit on the rim of the pot, well above the water.
- Whisk the egg white mixture constantly as it warms. Add the salt.
- When it reaches 45°C and the sugar is fully dissolved, remove the bowl from the pot.
- Using a stand mixer or hand mixer fitted with a whisk, whip the egg whites on high speed. As they whip, the egg whites will thicken and cool down.
- Beat for 5 minutes approximately until it has a consistency similar to shaving foam, and hold a medium-soft peak.
- Place a round piping tip inside a piping bag and using a spatula, place 2 large scoops of meringue in the bag. Push the meringue down toward the tip of the bag.
- Before you start piping the shapes, at each corner of the baking sheet, pipe a small dot of meringue under the parchment to glue the paper to the sheet.
- Hold the piping bag at a 90-degree angle, or perpendicular above the sheet pan, and pipe the meringues. (You might need to use a few sheet pans, depending on the size you pipe.)
- Bake the meringues for 1 hour 20 minutes, rotating the sheet pan 180° halfway. They should be crispy all the way through.
Video
Notes
- When making meringue, it is very important to use clean tools. If a drop of oil or other fats like egg yolk gets into the egg whites, the meringue will not whip properly.
- Don’t worry about over-whipping the meringue. It won’t affect the final outcome of the product, so better to over-whip than under-whip.
- If you want to add flavorings to this meringue, add them after the meringue is whipped to the proper consistency so that the flavorings don't affect the whipping process.
Meringue cookie designs