Peppermint Meringues

Every Christmas, my mother would give out homemade peanut brittle to friends and family, our school teachers, and my dad's work associates.  People looked forward to it every year, because it isn't your typical peanut brittle.  It is much more toffee like because of the amount of butter in the recipe plus the addition of pecans at the end.  Oh, the difference these two ingredients make!  I won't even try any peanut brittle on the market or any other recipe. 

It's ok.  You can say it.  I'm a peanut brittle snob.

I will try to post pics of the process when we make it this year, but since it's a two-person job and G has got some good peanut brittle skills already, we will probably need someone to volunteer to take pics for us.  And after the family reunion in the summer, when my mother's sister said that she has started just making pecan brittle, I am thinking I will do likewise as well...talk about decadent...

A few years back, I added toffee to the annual Christmas candy giveaway, and now people at work look forward to it every year.  I use the old Fanny Farmer toffee recipe that is about as easy as it gets - 2 cups of butter (yes, that's an entire pound of butter!) and 2 cups of sugar.  Cook them together to 290 degrees on a candy thermometer, and then pour it into a well buttered jelly roll pan.  Score it as it cools and then dip each piece in chocolate. 

So I will definitely be making both of those sometime this season, provided we get at least 1 - 2 low humidity days.  If not, then all bets are off.

But each year, I also try to come up with a theme for Christmas gift boxes to give as gifts.  One year I put together what I called a "chocolate crinkle tasting" - where folks could taste normal chocolate crinkles, cappuccino crinkles and mocha crinkles.  Last year I combined the box of treats with a Prezi Jeopardy game. If you aren't familiar with Prezi, you can click on this link to see what I did and get a glimpse of the zooming features of Prezi...It really is a cool presentation tool that is easy to learn!

I think you get the idea.  Well I'm working on a theme again this year, and the below recipe and pics are one part of this theme. 

How cute are these?! 

Let's start with the recipe.  This is an Italian meringue from Helen Fletcher, which means that the beaten egg whites are sweetened and stabilized with a sugar syrup cooked to 248 degrees.  It isn't as hard or tricky as it may first seem, and Helen Fletcher's instructions give you all you could want to know about making an Italian meringue.  I am not going to repeat all of her information here, but I will summarize the instructions as best I can so I think you could try this yourself if you wanted to.  Oh, and please keep in mind that I am still very much learning how to do this, so try to be gracious and patient with me and my elementary blogging skills.

Here are the basic meringue ingredients to start.  I used the 4-egg white version because I had 4 egg whites left on hand after Pie Night.  Just the way it worked out, but 4-egg whites yielded about 60 of these little cookies.

1/4 cup water
3/4 cup sugar
1 t. light corn syrup
4 egg whites
1 t. lemon juice or 1/4 t. cream of tartar
1/3 cup sugar
2 t. vanilla (I never measure flavorings, so this is essentially a generous splash)

Combine the water, 3/4 c. sugar and corn syrup in a small heavy bottom saucepan and place over high heat, stirring to mix and brushing down the side of the pan with a pastry brush dipped in cold water to prevent crystallization.  Boil to 248 degrees on a candy thermometer.  (I wouldn't try this without a candy thermometer and Helen Fletcher agrees.)

Meanwhile, start beating the egg whites with the lemon juice or cream of tarter to soft peaks.  Then gradually add the 1/3 c. sugar until the egg whites are stiff.  If the egg whites get too close to stiff before the sugar syrup reaches 248 degrees, slow down the mixer until the syrup gets over 240 degrees.  If the syrup is 240 and the whites aren't close enough to stiff, increase the mixer speed to high - and start praying that the timing works out!  (Don't panic.  The timing almost always works out just about perfect.)

With the mixer on medium speed, slowly pour the sugar syrup down the side of the mixer bowl into the beaten egg whites.  Then add the vanilla and continue beating until the whites are cool, thick and very stiff - about 7 minutes.

Now, while you are doing that, hire G to crush peppermints for you, so that you end up with some peppermint dust and some peppermint crumbles.  If they fall through the strainer, then it goes in the dust bowl; it not, they go in the crumble bowl.

Take a couple of teaspoons of the fine dust and fold it into the egg whites.  This is to taste, ya just don't want to over mint. 

Now comes the fun part!  Take a pastry bag and put a Wilton # 12 tip in the bottom (or any other tip that suits your fancy).  Then take a small artist brush and stripe the inside of the bag with red gel food color like this in 3 different spots.

Then fill the bag with meringue.  This size recipe will fill a disposable bag 3 times over, so be ready to stripe 3 bags.  Now line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and tack it down in the corners with a dap of meringue.  And start piping to the size and shape you want.  This is what I did.

 

I simply swirled the meringue on top of itself and the striping formed itself.  It may take a bit of practice and you'll likely have to squeeze a bit of meringue into a bowl before the striping starts, but that isn't wasted meringue.  Just add it to the next bag.

 

Finally we sprinkled just a bit of the peppermint crumbles on the very top before drying in the oven at 200 degrees for about 1.5 to 2 hours.  Check after 1.5 hours and see if they are dry and will release.  If they do, then turn the oven off and leave in the oven for another hour.  If not, keep the oven on and check again in 1/2 hour intervals until they release easily, at which point, turn the oven off and let them dry the hour with the oven door closed.

 

And here are the finished cookies!  I find them to be really refreshing with just a slight crunch that sorta melts in your mouth since they are really just little puffs of minty air.



 

This is the same meringue recipe I used for the "crust" of the Double French Silk Pie for K, except I didn't add any crushed peppermint.  Instead, I folded in 3 T. of cocoa, but the next time, I would add at least 4 T. of cocoa and perhaps even 5 or 6, depending upon how dark I wanted the chocolate meringues to be.  You could even do both the cocoa and the peppermint dust or crumbles to make a chocolate mint meringue!  (Just don't offer any to my son, S!  He thinks chocolate mint is wrong! Some of us think S is wrong on this.)

 

I didn't include the step by step pics of making the meringue, but you can click here to learn from Helen Fletcher.  This is the same technique, just don't boil the syrup to 250 and don't add the butter to turn it from meringue into buttercream.  Make sense?

 

Thanks for reading through this.  I know I have SOOOOO much to learn about sharing recipes here, but hopefully I will learn by doing.  Thanks for your patience with my steep learning curve!

 

Stay tuned!  More on the theme throughout the month...