The birthday party we attended this weekend was catered. Same firm as last year. Same incredibly beautiful arrays of crudités and cheeses.
I appreciated the quality and the presentation, but honestly my mind was elsewhere. I waited, expectantly, for dessert to appear. This year, this year I was not going to be a coward, or intimidated. If those cookies from last year appeared, I was going to solicitously ask the caterer for the recipe. If she held back, I was going to get tough. Bribery, threats, whatever it took, but I had to have the recipe.
“Maida Heatter,” she answered at once. “My hero.”
“Mine, too,” I smiled, guilty at all the bizarre schemes that now I did not have to employ.
Am I exaggerating? No, I’m not. I eat food almost every day. And I remember these cookies from last year as if I had them just last week.
Here’s Maida’s recipe. It’s quick to make and so very good. Of course, a hot summer day with humidity is not meringue friendly. So you might wait for a drier, fall day. But don’t wait too long.
I’ve posted before about Surprise Cookies, a recipe many have offered where meringue is mixed with chocolate chips. When they bake, the chips melt and your surprise is that rush of chocolate hot from the oven. There the chocolate is literally in “hot spots” distributed randomly in the cookie. [If you are a technical geek, the distribution is a three-dimensional Poisson.]
Here, the effect is different. The chocolate is already melted then folded into the meringue. The distribution of chocolate flavor, the look, and the feel are quite different.
If you are into ice cream made with egg yolks, here is a sublime way to use up those egg whites and have a tasty treat to accompany the ice cream.
Saturday Night Meringues
Yield: 32 cookies
Ingredients:
- 2 large egg whites
- Pinch salt
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice or 1/2 teaspoon cider vinegar
- 6 ounces semisweet chocolate, melted over double boiler and slightly cooled
- 1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
Preparation:
Position oven racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper.
Using the small bowl of a stand mixer on medium-high speed, beat the egg whites with the salt until they form soft peaks. Reduce speed to medium-low and add the sugar by the teaspoonful, blending well after each addition.
When about half of the sugar has been incorporated, add the vanilla extract and lemon juice or cider vinegar, then add the rest of the sugar. Increase speed to high just until the mixture forms stiff peaks. Remove the bowl from the mixer. Add the melted chocolate, folding it in with a spatula as lightly as possible and leaving streaks of white in the batter. Gently fold in the walnuts.
Drop rounded teaspoonfuls of the batter onto the prepared baking sheets, about 1 1/2 inches apart. Bake for 10 minutes.
Use your fingers to lift the cookies off the parchment and carefully turn them on their sides to cool completely. Store in an airtight container for up to 3 days.
Source: Maida Heatter’s Brand New Book of Great Cookies