Friday Five Happy New Year

Happy New Year! May 2021 be better for all of us.

Here are five things I’m loving this week:

The days are getting noticeably longer. I was driving home yesterday around 4:30 p.m. and it was still light out.

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Meringues are an extra special cookie because having them turn out perfectly is quite an accomplishment.

Having any batch of cookies turn out is an accomplishment but meringues look so fancy and quite upmarket, especially if you pipe them instead of plopping them on the baking tray with a spoon.

Another reason to fall in love with meringues is their shelf life, if you can keep your family or roommates from devouring them all the first day.

You can keep meringues in an airtight container at room temperature for two weeks. Or freeze meringue cookies in a hard container like a cookie tin for a month.

One note of caution, choose a dry day for making meringues.

Too much humidity can cause the sugar in the egg whites absorb moisture, which will prevent your mixture from forming stiff peaks.

Your meringues may also weep because of humidity or turn soft. No one wants to eat sad, saggy meringues.

Ingredient List for Meringues

Equipment You’ll Need

Meringue Cookie Recipe Notes

You’ll want to prepare in advance by putting your metal or glass mixing bowl and whisk attachment in the freezer for an hour. The cold will help your egg whites stiffen into peaks.

Speaking of egg whites, pull those out of the fridge. You want the egg whites at room temperature. If you forget to pull the egg whites out, you’ll just have to beat them longer.

Be sure to scrub the bowl and whisk with hot, soapy water before drying and putting in the freezer. If any oil or a speck of dirt gets in your egg whites, it can keep your egg whites from stiffening.

Start with egg whites at room temperature. Add the salt and cream of tartar immediately. 

Beat the egg whites/salt/cream of tartar mixture for at least five minutes before beginning to add the sugar.

You’ll slowly add the sugar a couple tablespoons at a time, beating for a minute or two after each addition.

Once you’ve added all the sugar, continue beating until the all the sugar has been thoroughly absorbed by the egg white mixture.

You’ll know the sugar has been absorbed by rubbing a bit of the egg white/sugar mixture between two finger pads. If you feel any grains of sugar, you need to continue beating the mixture. 

Keep beating until you feel the mixture and it’s completely smooth and creamy.

Add extract and food coloring, beat until combined, about a minute.

These need to bake immediately. 

Prepare your piping bag or plastic bag if you’re going to use a pastry tip to form the meringues.

If you’re going to use a regular Ziplock type bag, snip about a quarter inch off one corner of the bag and insert the piping tip. 

Put the bag inside a drinking glass or a mug and pull it open and down over the mug.

Having the opening held open by the cup will make it easier to fill with meringue.

Spoon the meringue mixture into the bag and close it with a rubber band or a twist tie.

Smoosh the meringue down towards the tip end of the bag.

Using one hand to guide the tip and the other hand to apply pressure, extrude meringues into kiss shapes. These should be about twice the size of a Hershey’s Kiss. 

These will not spread so you can space them fairly close together. 

Bake at 220 F for 90 minutes. 

Turn the oven off at the end of the 90 minutes and leave the meringues in the oven until it cools down.

Remove from oven and find an airtight container to store the meringues in once they have cooled completely. 

These will keep for a month at room temperature in an airtight container. 

If you don’t have raspberry oil, you can use a different flavor. 

If you don’t have any food coloring, leave them white.

Frequently Asked Questions

My new puppy, Gustav aka Goose.

The freshness of a new year and its traditions. I’m making Hoppin John this afternoon.

This is my traditional recipe.

But I’m trying a variant from Lisa Fain at The Homesick Texan. I adore her recipes and this one looks delish. You can’t go wrong with bacon, jalapeno and garlic.

Did I ever tell you that if I could, I would live in a Tex-Mex restaurant? Definitely.

Bitters in a martini glass filled with icy-cold seltzer water.

I got these sugar cubes containing grapefruit and cardamom essential oils at a new liquor store I checked out. They have a larger selection of bitters than most stores. These cubes are really good and I went back to get more and they were sold out. The story of 2020.

I also got a bottle of Peychaud’s.

One goal I’d like to accomplish in 2021 is making my own bitters. I think that would be fun. It would be even funner if I could make a batch using herbs that I grew myself.

We shall see. Right now I’m only growing the basics, rosemary, thyme, sage, lavender and basil. Oh and rue.

Finally, these pink lemonade thumbprint cookies round out my list of five things for this week.

They are from this cookbook and they are my new favorites.

There’s a Kindle edition if you’ve made a resolution to not fill your house with so many books this year. You get a credit toward your next Kindle book purchase when you get Martha’s Cookie Perfection.

Did you know that you don’t need a Kindle to buy Kindle books? I read them using the Kindle app on my iPhone.

Or you can read a Kindle book on your computer or tablet.

What are you loving this week?