Peppermint Meringues

It's Christmas time! Which translates into lots and lots of baking. I tried meringues for the first time - it was a lot simpler than I thought! I did have to make them twice though and I'll tell you why later in this post.

While prepping for this recipe I learned a LOT:

•  difference between kosher salt and table salt - it's just the size of the salt grain (kosher being larger). At the end of the day, salt is salt. But it does make a difference because if you use large quanitities of it, you can't just swap one out for the other (as I did in this recipe - up to a tsp the swap is negligible (did I spell that right? more importantly, did I use it right grammatically speaking?!)
• difference between a French, Italian and Swiss meringue. Actually maybe I should delete this off the list because right after I typed that, I seem to have forgotten what it was...
• difference between food coloring and food gel - I use the latter for my cookie decorating and thought it was the same thing. Turns out it's not and I have the photos to prove it.
  
  

ALSO - did you know that peppermint oil aids in digestion and is good for the respiratory system? Nevermind that the Peppermint Meringue recipe I'm about to post only has 1/8 of a teaspoon of oil in it...divide that into the 48 meringues that came out of the recipe and you have .26% of a teaspoon of healing benefits coming your way.  There's an excuse to eat a lot of meringues guilt free..."it's for my lungs!!!"

This recipe is lifted off from Bon Appetit's "Cookie-A-Day" slideshow.  It's a fairly simple recipe. You do need a stand mixer though...I suppose you could use a hand mixer if necessary. You'll get the added benefit of ripped upper arms after as well.

PEPPERMINT MERINGUES
by Bon Appetit magazine

INGREDIENTS

3 large egg whites, room temperature

1/8 teaspoon kosher salt

1/3 cup sugar

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1/8 teaspoon peppermint extract
12 drops red food coloring

1.  Separate your egg whites and let them come down to room temperature.This isn't a step on the original recipe but its the WORST when you're all ready to start but can't because of 1 small thing like that. I even bolded, italicized AND put this comment in RED in the ingredients portion so you wouldn't forget. Maybe I should have underlined as well. But I thought that wuold be overkill.

2.  Preheat your oven to 200 degrees. Line baking sheets (I needed 2) with parchment paper.

3.  In mixer, beat egg whites and salt on medium high speed until white and foamy, about 1 minute.

4.  With mixer running, gradually add sugar in 3 additions, beating for 2 minutes between each addition
Total beat time of 6 minutes....are your arms sore yet hand mixers?!

5.  Add powdered sugar and peppermint extract, beat to blend, about 1 minute

6.  Dot food coloring over surface of meringue - DO NOT STIRThe coloring will form swirls when piped.

Actually I was already suspicious about this food coloring vs food gel swap and only dotted 9 drops from the suggested 12.

7. Spoon meringue into a pastry bag fitted with a 1/2" piping tip.This is the metal thing up in my ingredients picture for those that might not be familiar with piping tips.  Mine is actually a little bit larger than 1/2"...wait a second...NO WONDER!! I just had a lightbulb moment but I'll continue and explain later. (Sorry, I'm like the friend that calls to say something very important and then "forgets" - YEA RIGHT!! )



I really have to comment bloggers who take such nice pictures. This photo teaches me to take the extra minute to wash my hands before taking pictures. 

8.  Pipe 1" rounds onto prepared baking sheets, spaced 1" apart all around

9.  Bake meringues until dry, about 2 1/2 hours
Yup. TWO and a HALF hours. Crazy how long these suckers take to dry. You're basically just drying them out in a low heat...it's not "baking" like how you normally think cookies do.  They pretty much look the same when they're done as when they go in...just...dryer.

10.  Let cool completely. ENJOY!

Maybe I should have used the 2 1/2 hours waiting to get a mani...

DO AHEAD: meringues can be made 2 days in advance and stored in an airtight container at room temperature between sheets of parchment or waxed paper.
I had a slight problem stacking these for storage cuz I found all the dainty tips of the meringues broke off while being handled and stacked....maybe no one notices the tips? I DID. I was staring at all the missing tips when I was laying them out for Sunday's post-concert spread....

So let's go back to the food coloring versus food gel:  food gel is WAY more concentrated. I did a 2nd batch with only 2-3 drops of food gel and this is what I got:

Much prettier.

My lightbulb moment! It's because the recipe says it yields 60 meringues. The first time I got 40. The second time I made them smaller to the suggested 1" and I got 48. But Maybe its because my tip is larger than the suggested 1 1/2".  A quick calculation shows that I used a tip that was 17% larger than the suggested....so if you think of each meringue as having 17% more than its supposed to, you'd have a 17% shortage right? 17% of 60 is ~10 meringues....does this even make any mathematical sense? I'm grabbing strings here. But the numbers are (correctly or not) working out for me so I'll take it!

One more shot of the finishd product up close:

Also - for those that were trying out the basic sugar cookie and royal icing recipes, I've updated them with photos so check them out.