Taste buds begging for a little something sweet? These cookies do require a bit of time, but the flavor is a just reward.
Should I confess now or later about my goof on these mocha morsels?
Mixing up the ingredients was easy enough but piping the cookies was a little more challenging. You need to know that I made fairly lavish cakes when the kids were growing up and had a pretty extensive collection of tips and pastry bags. All those tools were given away when we moved to Oregon. I had no intention of making children’s cakes to match their favorite cartoon or TV characters. I was retiring and headed for the easy life! Well, I sure could have used them today. Piping meringue out of a ziplock bag wasn’t an easy task.
The recipe makes 42 cookies. I knew I was in trouble when I counted 41 cookies on one cookie sheet and had only used about one-fourth of the ingredients. Yeah that happens sometimes. Obviously I made these cookies too small. So the next cookie sheet I tried to make them larger. That kinda worked, but still had over half of the cookie mixture left and I had filled two cookie sheets.
Next step – I have to cook them for one hour and cool for one hour in the oven. And I still have at least one-half the ingredients in the mixing bowl to be baked. That might not be a problem if I had all day to cook these. It is a problem today because I have to leave the house in one hour with partially baked cookies in the oven and more batter to cook. Gosh, did I take a stupid pill this morning? No comment from husband, however, I think I detected a smirk he was trying to hide.
Okay so I can sort of get one batch of these cookies baked before I need to leave. But what the heck do I with the rest of the ingredients until I get back? It is meringue after all. It’s not going to like sitting around for 2-3 hours. After a little research the best advice was to cover the mixing bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate. So I did.
Fast forward three hours….. meringue was in fairly good shape. Mixture at the top of the bowl was dry and at the bottom of the bowl was liquidy – so needed to gently mix it to even out the texture. Meringue was softer and had more air bubbles.
“Take two” on piping meringue on cooking trays. Done. Cook batch two. Done.
Helpful Notes:
When piping cookies on parchment paper, make sure there are no air bubbles in the bag. It will pipe out with air holes in the cookies.
The cookies shown below were from the second batch that sat in the fridge for 3 hours before baking, so they do appear flatter but tasted just as good.
In the second batch, I dropped batter from spoon (instead of piping) and cookies seemed to cook fine. Next time I may not pipe the batter at all – just spoon it on the baking sheet.
Cookies are done when they lift off the parchment paper easily. If they stick and leave some of the cookie on the paper they need to cook or dry in the oven a little longer.
Serves 42
Save RecipeIngredients
- 4 large egg whites at room temp (I used egg whites in a carton - equivalent to 1 cup)
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
- 1 1/4 teaspoons instant espresso powder (I used Starbucks Via)
- 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Stir together vanilla extract and espresso powder until espresso is dissolved.
- Beat with mixer - egg whites, cream of tartar and salt until soft peaks forms.
- Gradually sprinkle in sugar a few tablespoons at a time until stiff glossy peaks form.
- Beat in vanilla mixture to the egg whites.
- Add in cocoa slowly until combined.
- Spoon meringue into plastic bag and cut tip off to 1/2" opening to pipe meringue to form 1" diameter kisses on prepared baking sheets spaced about 1 1/2" apart.
- Bake until meringues are dry about 50-55 minutes.
- Rotate baking sheets about half way through baking time.
- Turn off oven when cooked, prop open door and let meringues cool completely in oven about an hour.
- Peel meringues off paper. Store in airtight container.
Notes
For 2 regular sized cookies: 42 calories, 0g fat, 10g carb, 9g sugar, 1g protein. Smart points 2
Nutrition