Chocolate Meringue Cookies

After making the wonderful vanilla ice cream that I blogged about here:  http://www.madhuknitsandcooks.com/madhu_knits_and_cooks/2009/03/vanilla-ice-cream-and-apple-crumble.html, I had 6 leftover egg whites.  Similar to the incident with the leftover egg yolks that ended up in the cracked sugar cookies (http://www.madhuknitsandcooks.com/madhu_knits_and_cooks/2009/03/very-delicious-and-probably-not-very-healthy-cracked-sugar-cookies.html), I wanted to make sure to use up the whites and immediately my thoughts turned to meringue!

A few years back, I made a banana cream pie and used the leftover egg whites to make some delicious chocolate meringue cookies with mini chocolate chips (I believe the recipe was from Cooking Light).  However, I did not realize that one should really use an electric mixer when making meringues and that the whites should be at room temperature before you start, so I ended up whisking the whites for two and a half hours before getting soft peaks!  I also ended up WAY over baking them, which did not lead to a great result.  Needless to say, I’ve learned a lot since then about making good meringue!

For this effort, I ended up finding a new recipe online on AllRecipes.com, http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Chocolate-Meringue-Cookies/Detail.aspx, and doubled the recipe without any problems.  I added in some chocolate chips, and slightly underbaked the meringue (by reducing the time, not temperature) to get a more chewy result.  The cookies were definitely a big hit in the office, and I don’t think they survived for more than a few hours!