Recipe: Meringues with Variations (drop cookies using egg whites, no flour)

MERINGUES
Alice Randall: "For me meringues are a near-perfect dessert. They are sweet, crunchy, and embody a bit of cooking magic."



3 large egg whites, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees F. Line a baking sheet or two with parchment paper.

Beat the egg whites with an electric mixer until they begin to form peaks. Beat in 1/2 cup of the sugar, teaspoon by teaspoon, until the meringue thickens and becomes shiny.

Switch to a rubber spatula and fold in the rest of the sugar. Fold in the vanilla. Drop the meringues by the heaping tablespoon onto the parchment paper.

Bake until crisp, 30 minutes. The meringues will crisp up further as they cool at room temperature.

When cool, use a sharp-edged spatula to remove them from the parchment paper. Store in an airtight container if you are not serving immediately.

VARIATIONS:
Once you can whip up a meringue with ease, many variations are possible. My favorite: add a tablespoon of instant coffee with the last of the sugar. Or you can add a tiny pinch of flaky sea salt, such as Maldon, to the top of the meringues before baking If you want to get really fancy.

If you are preparing the meringues for a wedding, birthday, or other important event, you can take them from everyday to festive by making them with vanilla sugar instead of regular sugar. The day before making the meringues, put the sugar you will be using in a jar with a tight-fitting lid and add a vanilla bean-split it lengthwise, scrape out the seeds, and add the seeds and bean to the sugar Remove the vanilla bean (save it for another use) before using the sugar in the recipe. It you do this, you won't need the teaspoon of vanilla, unless you want, and I often do, a very strong vanilla flavor.

ABOUT THE RECIPE:
"For me meringues are a near-perfect dessert. They are sweet, crunchy, and embody a bit of cooking magic. I grew up eating these little clouds of Joy. Among Nana's cookbooks, one of the real rarities is The Frances Parkinson Keyes Cookbook. Keyes was a popular early twentieth-century novelist who settled in New Orleans and wrote extensively about culinary Louisiana. Just above a Maple Mousse that Keyes claims as "F.P.K.'s Own Invention," she provides a meringue recipe that is simplicity itself. In fact, it's so simple that someone who doesn't know how to make meringues probably would end up with a gooey mess following the instructions. Keyes assumes we know things that have been lost as culinary literacy has declined. My mother shelves the Keyes cookbook beside Cross Creek Cookbook by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, the Florida novelist who wrote The Yearling and was friends of a sort with Zora Neale Hurston. Mama believes the folksy Rawlings would drive the fancy Keyes crazy. I think they're both a mess. Kinnan's book includes a recipe for "Utterly Deadly Southern Pecan Pie." In her recipe for "My Reasonable Pecan Pie" she writes, "I have nibbled at the Utterly Deadly Southern Pecan Pie and I have served it to those in whose welfare I took no interest." In contrast, here's a recipe with full instructions that I would be happy to serve to those I love. I try to do as my mother has come to do: limit myself to eating the sweets I make myself, sweets I would truly be unable to cook myself or those made by someone who loves me and are given as a gift. It doesn't mean I eat no sugar; it does mean I eat less."

Makes 2 dozen 2-inch meringues
Used by permission to Recipelink.com from Clarkson Potter
Adapted from source: Soul Food Love by Alice Randall and Caroline Randall Williams