CandyCane Meringue Kisses

Ingre­di­ents

• 2 large egg whites–make SURE that no yolk remains in the whites. Let them sit out for a bit to come to room temperature.
• 1/2 cup gran­u­lated sugar
• 1/8 tea­spoon cream of tar­tar (egg whites like a bit of acid to help them whip right)
• Hershey’s Mini Choco­late Kisses–I find these on the bak­ing aisle rather than the candy aisle–if these aren’t avail­able, you could try using 3 choco­late chips instead.
• 1/4 cup crushed up pep­per­mint candy canes–make sure that you crush them pretty small, oth­er­wise they get caught in the pip­ing tip–very frustrating!!

Instruc­tions

1. I make these in my KitchenAid mixer.
2. Here’s the prob­lem with this: the amount of egg white isn’t enough to catch onto the bot­tom of the whisk. KitchenAids are kind of noto­ri­ous for this. It’s their only flaw.…but I’ve had mine for over 20 years and I love, love, LOVE it!
3. My solu­tion: I put the egg whites in and hand whisk them until they are bub­bly and frothy. They prob­a­bly are dou­ble in vol­ume before I put the bowl back on the mixer and con­tinue using the machine.
4. Now the whisk can reach the whites. So add the cream of tar­tar and put the mixer on medium-speed and whip away!
5. You want to get to a ‘soft-peak’. You can tell this has been reached when you lift the whisk up out of the egg white and the peak droops over at the tip.
6. Now you want to increase the speed of the mixer to high. As the egg whites con­tinue to beat, slowly pour the sugar into the bowl.
7. Beat until firm peaks form. The egg white foam will become smooth, moist and shiny. Stop the beat­ers and then lift them — straight peaks should form.
8. Now con­tinue beat­ing on high until stiff peaks are formed. Whites will be very stiff and glossy. Make sure they are com­plete to this stage if you want defined peaks at the top of your cookies.
9. Add the 1/4 cup crushed candy canes. Fold them in gen­tly until well mixed.
10. The meringue is now ready. You can either spoon it out as-is onto parch­ment (I don’t rec­om­mend a sil­pat for these cook­ies), or pipe it into shapes, or whatever!
11. To make the Can­dy­Cane Meringue Cook­ies, you’ll need to have a few things ready:
12. A pip­ing bag
13. A piping/writing tip about 1/4 inch in diam­e­ter (I used a #12)
14. Parch­ment paper
15. A quar­ter
16. A pen­cil
17. the mini kisses
18. With the pen­cil, use the quar­ter to trace sev­eral (about 40) cir­cles on the parch­ment paper. Leave about a half inch of space between each cir­cle. Turn this paper upside down onto your bak­ing sheet. ( I used two bak­ing sheets) You should be able to see the cir­cles through the parchment.
19. Pre­heat your oven to 225 degrees Fahrenheit.
20. Fit the pip­ing tip into the pip­ing bag. I rec­om­mend using a plas­tic coupler–that way if the tip does become clogged, you can eas­ily remove the tip and clear it out.
21. Scoop the meringue into the pip­ing bag.
22. Twist the bag closed at the top and pipe flat cir­cles onto the parch­ment. I made them a tad big­ger than the quar­ter size, just use it as a guide.
23. Place a mini kiss in the cen­ter of the cir­cles and pipe up and around the kisses. Try to make sure the whole mini kiss is cov­ered. Pull up at the end to make the peak. They should look like big choco­late kisses. Just prac­tice to get this shape. The not-perfect ones still taste delicious!
24. When all meringue is used or pans are filled, place into the oven for 1 hour and 30 min­utes. Don’t peek! Let set on pans for a few hours after done bak­ing. They are a lit­tle frag­ile, espe­cially at the tip, but so yummy!