French meringue clouds

While I love using Italian and Swiss meringues for topping pies and other desserts, I think these cookies are at their best when made with French style meringue. Fortunately for us, French meringue is the easiest of the three to master. It requires no cooking and no carefully monitored candy thermometer. All you need is a good mixer, egg whites, granulated sugar, cream of tartar, and a touch of vanilla or other flavoring. The only tricky part is to be sure to neither under beat or over beat your meringue.

Actually, there’s one more tricky part. You must be careful to use a perfectly clean mixing bowl and a perfectly clean beater, because even the smallest bit of grease will make your meringues fail. And ditto for carefully separating the eggs. Get even the tiniest bit of yolk in your whites and, yep, you guessed it, or meringue will fail.

But these are easy challenges to face. Just be sure to carefully wash and dry your equipment, and use a small dish to separate each egg, one at a time, before adding it to the mixing bowl. That way, if you mess up you’ll have lost one egg, not the entire batch. And you can always save that “ooops” egg for tomorrow morning’s scramble.

One more tip: Low and slow is the way to go, when beating, when baking, and when cooling, in order to produce meringues that don’t deflate or crack.

Follow the steps carefully and you should have no trouble making perfect meringues the first time.

Most meringue cookies are made by using a star tip to pipe the meringue onto the parchment-lined baking sheet. We’re going to do something a bit different. We’re going to use a plain round tip to pipe little balls of meringue together, to resemble fluffy clouds. Why? because it’s fun, and because I’m working with a cloud theme today. Feel free to pipe them any way you choose.

Ingredients:

• 4 large egg whites at room temperature (they will beat to higher peaks if they’re at room temperature).

• 1 cup superfine or regular granulated white sugar

• ¼ teaspoon cream of tartar

• ¼ teaspoon kosher salt

• 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste or extract

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 200º.

• Take two sheet of parchment paper, measured to fit your baking pans. Using a pencil, draw cloud shapes on the paper, each about two inches long and an inch high. Leave an inch or so between them—meringues don’t spread, but you want to leave room for air to circulate between the cookies as they bake. Be random with your drawing—no two clouds look alike! Once you’ve got your templates, turn the papers over and set them upside down on two baking sheets. You should be able to see your pencil marks through the paper.

• Set up your piping bag. I’m using a medium sized round tip for these meringue clouds. If you don’t have tips or a piping bag, no worries. Use a zip bag with one corner snipped off.

• Have all your ingredients measured and ready to go.

• Start beating your whites at a slow speed. Keep the mixer running constantly throughout the process.

• When they are nice and frothy, add the salt and the cream of tartar.

• Give it another 30 seconds or so, and then slowly add about ¼ cup of the sugar, with the mixer still on low.

• When the sugar is incorporated, raise the speed to medium and very slowly add the rest of the sugar.

• Continue to beat the mixture on medium speed. It should take about 10 minutes for the meringue to increase in volume and become thick and glossy. The time is just a guideline. You’ll know that it’s done when lifting the beater leaves tall peaks that stay upright and don’t flop over. Once you reach that point, stop mixing or your meringue will begin to deflate.

• Use a silicone spatula to scrape the meringue into your piping bag.

• To make clouds, you want to pipe a series of little balls that connect (see the photo at the top). Holding the bag straight up and down, squeeze out dollops of batter while slowly lifting the bag. Release pressure and move to the next spot, filling in your cloud templates. You’ll get a rhythm going in no time.

• Bake the meringues for two hours. Unlike real clouds, you want them to be moisture-free.

• Then turn off the oven and leave the door closed for another 30 minutes.

• After 30 minutes have passed, open the door slightly. If your oven door will stay open a smidge by itself, let it do so. Otherwise, use a rolled up dish towel to keep the door slightly open for another 30 minutes.

• After the second 30 minutes has passed, open the door completely and leave the pans in the oven for a final 30 minutes.

• When the cookies are completely cool, peel them off the parchment and store them in a tightly covered container to maintain their crispness. If you have one of those little moisture absorbing packets, use it. The cookies should stay several days. If they start to soften they can be re-crisped by putting them into a 200º oven for about 10 minutes.