one for all and all for cake: Chewie!

In my quest to figure out what to do with the leftover egg whites I had in the fridge (from my excursion down the streets of Custard Court), I extensively searched the wonderful worldwide web to find an answer that seemed pretty simple: meringues. When I mentioned I was thinking of making these delights to BF, he grimaced and said they weren't his favorite. Well, foohey on him I said and proceeded to search out a recipe that would take care of 8 egg whites that had been residing in the fridge for nearly a week.

I didn't really see any one recipe that I absolutely had to try, so I decided to come up with my own. Now, as I am no seasoned baker, this could've been a huge disaster. But to my surprise, I was rewarded with somewhat-stable looking cookies for my first-time ever adventure into egg-white-territory. As I tried a cookie from the chocolate batch, I thought, hey, this ain't so bad. But as I continued to taste-test the next batch of orange ones, I realized why BF is not-so-big-of-a-fan. They came out exactly like the recipes I had looked at said they should: crunchy outside, soft and chewy in the middle. But I think the part that trips me up in rating this as a good eat is that the chewiness in the middle is more of a caramel/toffee chewy rather than a soft-chewy texture. I think I was expecting more of a brownie-type inside, but I guess I should've known better since the only ingredients I used were egg whites and sugar (plus flavoring elements).

Anyways, I don't think I'm going to ever make these again since neither I nor BF would willingly eat them. The remaining cookies were packed up and shipped off to BF's company so that his co-workers might enjoy them (if they like meringues that is).

EDIT: Since I didn't find a recipe I really liked, I took the basic elements of making meringues from fxcuisine.com and just adapted what I had to their suggestions.

Basic Meringue Recipe

Ingredients:
1 part egg white
2 part baker's sugar (also known as caster sugar)
flavorings (I used 1 tsp orange zest for the orange meringues and 1/4 cup cocoa powder for the chocolate ones)

Directions:
Make sure your mixing bowl and whisk are absolutely clean and free of any kind of oils/residues. Whip the egg whites until they become a stiff, white foam (I start off a little slow and then move up in speed once the egg whites become less congealed). Gradually add in the sugar while the mixer is going (I slowed the mixer down here to about a medium so sugar wouldn't spray everywhere) and continue whipping the mixture until it becomes very stiff (its imperative that you only add the sugar when the egg whites are stiff otherwise you end up with a deflated mixture that won't be fluffy).

Add in your extracts if you're flavoring your meringues, otherwise just transfer the mixture into a pastry bag (or ziploc bag) and pipe onto parchment paper (I highly recommend using parchment paper or else you're left with stuck-on meringues that crumble when you try to remove them off the trays). I used a large star piping tip, but you can just cut a corner of the ziploc bag and go from there.

Bake for 90 minutes at 220 degree F. After 90 minutes, shut off the oven and leave the meringues in the oven with the door open. This helps them dry out even more which is what you want. Once they are cooled, they should just pop right off the parchment paper and into waiting mouths. Meringues detest moisture, so if you need to put them in a airtight container if you want them to last for more than a few hours.