Egg whites: The room temperature egg whites allow more air to be introduced and create our meringues, all fluffy and white!
Sugar: That sugar doesn’t just sweeten the meringue, but helps stabilize it’s shape when whipped and baked. Nice and fine icing sugar dissolves into our meringue perfectly without adding additional flavor.
Desiccated coconut: Thanks to it’s fine shredded texture, desiccated coconut is the best choice to use here which sticks to the meringue best giving a nice fluffy texture to our biscuits. It is not recommended to completely substitute the cookies with shredded or flaked coconut as the result will likely be quite different.
Ice Cream Scoop: The scoop used here creates large cookies with a diameter of 6 centimeters / 2.36 inches.
Should the cookies be chewy: A chewy meringue cookie is the result of a shorter baking time. When you bake whipped egg whites at a low temperature for a long time you end up with crispy or dried exterior and, depending on baking time, chewy interior. When it comes to these meringue cookies, they do not bake long enough to fully dry out so the result is rather chewy, particularly with the cornflakes becoming a slightly chewy or soft in texture when coated in the meringue.
You can beat meringue too long: Over whipping egg whites can result in your meringue collapsing or weeping beads of sugar once baked. The best way to avoid over beating is to ensure you beat at a steady speed and allow at least 20-30 seconds of beating time for the sugar to dissolve between adding more and try not to beat for longer than 15 minutes (this is around the break point, I’ve noticed). Unfortunately, you cannot repair over whipped meringue, though, dependent on how over whipped they are, you could make an egg white based recipe such as macaroon’s or even a baked Alaska.
Notes
Egg whites: The room temperature egg whites allow more air to be introduced and create our meringues, all fluffy and white!
Sugar: That sugar doesn’t just sweeten the meringue, but helps stabilize it’s shape when whipped and baked. Nice and fine icing sugar dissolves into our meringue perfectly without adding additional flavor.
Desiccated coconut: Thanks to it’s fine shredded texture, desiccated coconut is the best choice to use here which sticks to the meringue best giving a nice fluffy texture to our biscuits. It is not recommended to completely substitute the cookies with shredded or flaked coconut as the result will likely be quite different.
Ice Cream Scoop: The scoop used here creates large cookies with a diameter of 6 centimeters / 2.36 inches.
Should the cookies be chewy: A chewy meringue cookie is the result of a shorter baking time. When you bake whipped egg whites at a low temperature for a long time you end up with crispy or dried exterior and, depending on baking time, chewy interior. When it comes to these meringue cookies, they do not bake long enough to fully dry out so the result is rather chewy, particularly with the cornflakes becoming a slightly chewy or soft in texture when coated in the meringue.
You can beat meringue too long: Over whipping egg whites can result in your meringue collapsing or weeping beads of sugar once baked. The best way to avoid over beating is to ensure you beat at a steady speed and allow at least 20-30 seconds of beating time for the sugar to dissolve between adding more and try not to beat for longer than 15 minutes (this is around the break point, I’ve noticed). Unfortunately, you cannot repair over whipped meringue, though, dependent on how over whipped they are, you could make an egg white based recipe such as macaroon’s or even a baked Alaska.
