Sugar Savvy

I’m always amazed by egg whites and the transformation that occurs when they’re subjected to intense beating with my stand mixer, a.k.a. Rosco. I recently had the luck of purchasing some organic vanilla beans (Madagascar Bourbon and Tahitian) from a friend-of-a-friend, who bought them wholesale. I was looking for an excuse to use them, and I wanted to make something light but flavorful enough to showcase the vanilla bean. I decided on meringue cookies.

Using a recipe I had for chocolate-cherry meringues, I swapped out most of the ingredients, except for the crucial egg whites, cream of tartar, and the sugars. I substituted dried blueberries and white chocolate; the latter, I thought, would work well with vanilla. In order to extract the fragrant bits from the inside of the bean, I cut it lengthwise and then used the blunt end of the knife to scrape the insides out in one, long sweeping motion. I ended up with a sweet but tart, melt-in-your-mouth meringue cookie.

If I were to make these again, I would do a few things differently. First, I would consider using a pastry bag and piping these out into tiny airy clouds because scoring these before they are baked and then breaking them apart afterward leads to unnecessary cracking. I would also use white chocolate and chop it up rather than the chips I had on hand; because the temperature for these is so low, the chips really don’t melt and chopped chocolate distributes itself much better. (In fact, my original recipe called for chopped chocolate but I only had chips on hand.)

One other word of advice: this takes several hours, so I would not recommend whipping up a batch of these after work unless you don’t mind the wait. The good news is that these keep for at least a week in a tightly-covered container–that’s about how old the cookies in this photo were, and you can see that they became a little crackly. Nevermind. They were still edible.

White Chocolate-Blueberry Meringue Cookies

Ingredients:
4 large egg whites
1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup powdered sugar
2 vanilla beans, or 1-2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 cup dried blueberries
3 oz. chopped white chocolate

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Cover large baking sheet with parchment paper. Draw a 14 inch by 10 inch rectangle on the paper. Turn the paper over and secure it to the sheet with masking tape.
3. Beat egg whites and cream of tartar together in mixing bowl on medium speed until soft peaks form. Increase the speed to high and gradually add the sugar, and then the powdered sugar, 1 tbsp. at a time, and continue to beat until stiff peaks form. Add the vanilla; beat until just blended. Fold in the blueberries and chocolate carefully.
4. Spread batter onto rectangle using the back of a spoon, or an icing knife. Score rectangle into two-inch squares using the tip of a sharp knife.
5. Bake at 200 for two hours. Turn oven off and cool meringue in the closed oven for 1 1/2 hours, or until dry. Carefully remove the meringue from the paper. Break into two-inch squares.

Yield: About 35 cookies