To make these crunchy, melt in your mouth chocolate meringue cookies, you only need a handful of ingredients!
Chocolate Meringue Cookies:
Yields: about 20 cookies
Ingredients:
- 1 egg white at room temperature (make sure there aren’t any egg yolks mixed in with white)
- 2.5 tablespoons caster sugar (you can make it by processing granulated sugar in a food processor, see below)
- Pinch of salt
- 1⁄8 tsp cream of tartar or 1/4 teaspoon lemon juice
- 0.5 oz (15 grams) of your favorite dark chocolate (these cookies are very sweet, so I recommend using 75 percent or even 80 percent dark chocolate to balance it out)
Instructions:
1. Separate the egg white when it’s cold and then set aside to come to room temperature, about 30 minutes. Make sure there aren’t any yolk pieces in the whites.
2. If you don’t have caster sugar, pulse granulated sugar in the food processor a few times until it reaches a super fine consistency, but you don’t want it to be like powdered sugar, something in between.
3. Preheat the oven to 225°F (107 °C). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Have a piping bag fitted with a star shaped tip (I used Wilton 1M) ready to go.
4. Chop the dark chocolate into small pieces, place them in a microwave safe bowl and microwave for 15 seconds. Take the bowl out, stir, and microwave 10 more seconds, stir and continue microwaving for 10 second intervals until chocolate is melted. Set aside to cool down.
5. For this recipe, it’s best to use a stand mixer, because it’s more powerful. But you can also do it with a hand mixer, using the whisk attachment.
You need a large mixing bowl which should be very clean. Remember that the smallest amount of fat in your bowl or whisk will cause the egg whites to collapse or not increase in volume. To make sure you don’t have any fat residues in the bowl, pour some white distilled vinegar (or lemon juice) at the bottom of the bowl and swirl it around, then rinse it with cold water and dry it. Wipe the whisk attachment with some vinegar as well.
6. Add the egg white into the mixing bowl. Add salt and cream of tartar and start mixing on medium. You’ll see that the egg whites start to get foamy. Keep mixing until you reach soft peaks, about 2-3 minutes. It means, when you lift up the whisk, the egg white mixture doesn’t hold it’s shape and wilts. Make sure to check out the video to see exactly what it looks like.
7. Now while mixing on medium, start adding sugar a little at a time (around 1 teaspoon). After you added all the sugar, mix on medium-high (number 8 on a kitchen aid stand mixer) until the egg whites become glossy and white and they reach stiff peak about 3-4 minutes (If you’re using a hand mixer, it’ll take longer, so be patient)
Stiff peak means when you lift the whisk, it will hold it’s shape completely and is not wilting at all! It’s even hard to take the meringue off the whisk. Also, we check to see if all the sugar is dissolved. Get a little of the mixture and rub it between your fingers, you shouldn’t feel any grains of sugar. If you do, mix it a little bit longer.
8. When your meringue is ready, add roughly half of the melted chocolate into it and gently fold a few times. Then use the rest of the chocolate in the piping bag. Use a small spoon and drag the chocolate inside the bag to make a line. This will give a beautiful effect to the cookies.
9. Gently transfer the meringue into the piping bag, make sure not to press it too hard to knock out all the air.
10. Start piping the meringues on the parchment paper, not pressing the bag too hard. You don’t really need to leave some space between cookies, because they won’t spread.
11. Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes. Then turn off the heat and let them stay in the oven for one more hour (resist opening the oven door, lol).
12. The meringues are ready when you can take them off the parchment paper easily (Baking time may be longer in humid weather). Store them in an airtight container out of the fridge for a week.
Meringue cookies troubleshooting:
- Meringues deflated after baking:
This can happen due to different reasons,
- The egg whites aren’t beaten long enough and there isn’t enough structure to the meringue to hold it’s shape. So make sure that you beat the egg whites until it’s very stiff. Like if you turn the bowl upside down, it doesn’t drop! (Do this at your own risk! haha!)
- It also can happen if you add too much sugar at once. So make sure that you add the sugar slowly (about 1 teaspoon at a time).
- Skipping acid (cream of tartar) also causes a weak structure. Adding a small amount of acid, helps the egg whites to hold their shape better.
- Putting so much pressure on the piping bag; this causes the air in the meringue deflate. So make sure you don’t squeeze the bag very hard.
- The egg whites don’t foam no matter how long you beat them.
The reason why the egg whites are not foaming, is fat residues. There may be traces of egg yolk in the whites, or the bowl and whisk weren’t completely clean before using.
- The meringues held their shape but not their color.
Meringues are baked at very low temperatures, because they brown easily. It’s best to have an oven thermometer or get to know your oven before making meringues. For example, I know my oven runs a little high, for cakes and cookies a few degrees doesn’t really matter (plus I have a thermometer), but for meringues, I set my oven at around 220, sometimes 210, and the thermometer reads 225 F.
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