Meringue Mushrooms

With the holiday season upon us, it's time to get into some Christmas baking!  And really, does anything say "Christmas" more than meringue mushrooms?  No, no, bear with me.  This recipe will tie into something else I plan to post later this week.

 The things you'll need to make these delightful confections are 4 large egg whites (use real eggs for this, not the stuff you buy in the little cartons), 1/4 tsp cream of tartar, 3/4 C sugar, 1/4 tsp almond extract (or vanilla, peppermint, whatever flavor you want, really), and 2 ounces of semisweet chocolate.  You'll also want some unsweetened cocoa powder, but that'll come much later.

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper and set that aside.  In a medium glass or metal bowl (not plastic), beat your egg whites and cream of tartar with an electric mixer at high speed until soft peaks form when you lift up the beaters.  This will take a while and your egg whites will look all foamy.  Rather like that picture over to the right.

Turn your mixer back on and gradually add in your sugar, a tablespoon or two at time, until the sugar is completely dissolved and your egg whites now stand in stiff, glossy peaks when you lift up the beaters.  Again, this will take a little while.  Use the picture to the right to give you an idea of what it should look like when done.  Beat in the almond extract. 

Nothing like white on white for a clear picture!

Get out a large pastry bag with a 1/2" plain round tip.  Spoon the meringue into the bag so it's about half full (you don't want to fill up the bag too much or else it'll squooge all over when you squeeze it).  Pipe the meringue onto your parchment-lined baking sheet into little mounds to resemble mushroom caps and stems.  I recommend making more stems than caps, since those tend to break more easily.  Bake these guys for an hour and 45 minutes.  Turn off your oven and leave them in there for another 30 minutes to dry, then remove them from the oven and let them completely cool on a wire rack.


For the rest of this recipe, you might want to relocate to your living room and start a marathon of your favorite tv show (might I recommend Cowboy Bebop?) because the rest of this will take a while (are you detecting a theme with this recipe yet?).  Anyway, with a sharp knife, make a little hollow in each of your "mushroom" caps.  Melt your chocolate into a little dish.  You can do this in the microwave; just nuke it for 15 seconds at a time, stirring it around after each round.  Now spread some chocolate on the underside of each of the caps and stick a stem into each one.  Let these set for at least an hour. 

Some of the tastiest mushrooms you'll ever see!

If you want to, you can really just stop here, but as they are they don't look quite right; they're far too pristine for mushrooms.  So now take a little bit of unsweetened cocoa powder, sprinkle it on top, and rub it in to make your mushrooms look as though they're fresh from the forest floor!  Voila!  You now have a whole bunch of really tasty "mushrooms"!  Store these in an airtight container at room temperature (do NOT store them in the fridge).  They'll last for about a month, but really, it's unlikely that they'll still be around by then.  You can serve these as-is, but like I said up there at the top of this blog, I made them to go with something else.  Tune in later this week to find out what!!!