choc chip meringue cookies

Cookies are the universal pleaser. They have less crumbs than muffins, they don’t have a wrapper you have to toss, you don’t have to cut them to the right size to eat, you can eat more than one without feeling like a pig (unless they’re these) and they live in a cookie jar. Who doesn’t want to reach into a cookie jar upon coming home from school (or uni, work, shopping, that walk you took so you could come home and eat a cookie) and get one of these out?

Or these?

Or these?

I have a long list of recipes to make, and at least half of them are cookies; most of these are cookie jar cookies and they all have top priority. TOP priority.

Today, I’m hanging out with my gluten-free friend and so I had to make gluten free cookies. I was thinking I’d use spelt flour, like I did with those muffins, but then I remembered these from Smitten Kitchen. Deb dares you not to love them. I dare you not to scarf the whole lot by yourself.

I took one tray out of the oven just slightly too early and they stuck to the cooling rack, falling apart in my fingers, so I chopped them up and mixed them into a half-tub of vanilla ice cream I happened to have in my freezer. Needless to say, there won’t be a half-tub of anything in my freezer for very long, be it vanilla ice cream or vanilla choc-chip hazelnut meringue ice cream.

Choc-chip hazelnut meringue cookies

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

4 egg whites

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp cream of tartar

2 tsp vanilla essence

1 cup caster sugar

100g hazelnut chocolate, chopped finely

150g dark chocolate, chopped finely

Preheat oven to 200ºC. Line two baking trays with baking paper.

Beat egg whites until foamy; add cream of tartar, salt, and vanilla and beat until soft peaks form. Add sugar and beat until stiff and glossy.

Gently fold in chopped chocolate until just incorporated. Scoop tablespoons of the mixture onto the prepared baking trays. Bake for about half an hour, rotating trays at the halfway mark.