Chocolate Meringue Cookies
These diminutive chocolate meringue cookies have so much to recommend them that I hardly know where to start. They're flavorful, flexible, and fabulous. Read on to learn all the reasons why we love them and I think you will, too.
Servings: 60 small cookies
Calories: 60kcal
Equipment
Ingredients
For the meringue
- 4 large egg whites at room temperature
- ? teaspoon cream of tartar
- ? teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1 cup (210 grams) superfine sugar
- 2 teaspoons 7 grams) cornstarch
- 1 teaspoon (5 ml) white wine vinegar
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- ½ teaspoon chocolate extract
For the stripes and chocolate dip
- Gel food color
- 6 ounces (170 grams) bittersweet chocolate chips
Instructions
Make the meringues
- Preheat oven to 200°F with two racks close to the center.
- Line two rimmed half-sheet pans with parchment.
- Place the egg whites, cream of tartar, and salt into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk, or into a large bowl if using electric beaters. Whip on medium-high for about three minutes, until stiff peaks form. (If you lift the beaters or a spoon out of the egg whites, the tips of the peaks that form should stand up without falling over.)
- With the mixer running, add sugar a tablespoon at a time.
- Turn machine up to high and beat for five minutes, until you have a big, glossy bowl of what looks like marshmallow fluff.
- Sprinkle in cornstarch, vinegar, and vanilla, and fold in gently but thoroughly with a spatula.
- Fit a large piping bag with a star tip. Using a skewer or a small paintbrush, paint several thin lines of gel food dye onto the inside of the piping bag, starting from the tip and going about halfway up the bag. You don’t really have to do a good job of this at all for the effect to work, so don’t stress about it.
- Use the rubber spatula to transfer meringue from bowl into piping bag and twist the top to close.
- Pipe bite-sized meringues (about an inch and a half in diameter) onto parchment-lined cookie sheets, leaving an inch or so of space between them.
- Bake until dry and crisp all the way through, about two and a half hours.
- Turn off the oven and let cookies cool completely in the oven to prevent cracking. You can prop the door ajar with a wooden spoon to speed this process if you like.
Dip the cookies in chocolate
- When meringues are ready, melt chocolate chips. You can do this in a double-boiler or in the microwave in short bursts, stirring in between, until just melted.
- Dip the bottom of each cookie into the chocolate and set back on parchment until dry.
Notes
- You'll start with room-temperature egg whites. Don't use them straight out of the fridge, or they won't whip up as voluminously.
- You'll use a tiny bit of cream of tartar to help stabilize the egg whites. This fine white powder is a byproduct of winemaking.
- Superfine sugar dissolves into the mixture and yields a shinier, smoother final result than regular granulated sugar. If you don't have any (and I usually don't), you can blitz granulated sugar in the food processor for 30 seconds or so, until it's much finer.
- A little bit of vinegar also helps strengthen the egg white's proteins. You can use white wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar, or distilled white vinegar.
- Cornstarch helps absorb any extra moisture and prevent the meringue cookies from weeping. This is especially important if you don't plan to eat them immediately.
- You'll use one or more pure extracts to flavor the meringues. For a basic, super-delicious flavor, I call for equal parts vanilla and chocolate extract in the basic recipe. Please refer to the section below for lots more options.
- Gel food coloring produces well-behaved, brightly colored stripes and is very easy to work with. You can, of course, use any colors you like.
- Good quality bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate chips make a quick, easy, dip for the cookies. Thanks to the stabilizers that help chips keep their shape in cookies, they make a dip that sets up nicely on the cookies without a lot of fuss — and still tastes great. I haven't bothered with tempering in this recipe. If you'd rather start with fancier chocolate and temper it for the perfect snappy, shiny vibe, you can learn how to do it here.
- I do not normally add cocoa powder to these cookies because I love how the bright white meringue contrasts with the colorful stripes. But if you'd like an additional layer of chocolate flavor, you can add two tablespoons of a very good-quality natural cocoa powder along with the sugar, without making any further changes to the recipe.
- Once completely dry, cooled, and set, chocolate-dipped meringue cookies keep well in an airtight container at room temperature for several weeks — think mason jars and cellophane bags — so they also make great little gifts.
Flavor suggestions
Here are more of my favorite ways to flavor chocolate-dipped meringue cookies. You can have fun coordinating the stripe color with your flavors if you like.- Chocolate-peppermint (great for the holidays, and pictured below): ½ teaspoon chocolate extract + ¼ teaspoon peppermint extract
- Chocolate-orange: ½ teaspoon chocolate extract + ½ teaspoon orange extract
- Chocolate-almond: ½ teaspoon chocolate extract + ¼ teaspoon almond extract
- Mocha: ½ teaspoon chocolate extract + ½ teaspoon coffee extract
- Vanilla: 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- Lemon: 1 teaspoon lemon extract
- Lemon-vanilla: ½ teaspoon lemon extract + ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- Spiced: Up to one teaspoon total of ground spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, and cardamom (try a 2:1:1 ratio), or ground chili.
Nutrition
Serving: 1cookie | Calories: 60kcal | Carbohydrates: 4.7g | Protein: 0.5g | Fat: 1.2g | Fiber: 0.3g