Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Cocoa almond meringues



Don't you just love meringues?  They are like ballerina tutus or fairy princess skirts that melt in the mouth.  This week's Tuesday with Dorie challenge is the more robust, masculine, cocoa almond meringue, selected by Mike of  Ugly Food For An Ugly Dude. In fact, Dorie describes these meringues as resembling rocks in appearance, although they still have that wonderful melt in your mouth quality of the more dainty variety.

These are delightfully chocolatey, and tasted good even when they were not quite ready to come out of the oven (I tried one at the end of an hour's baking time and it was still quite wet in the middle).  The baking requirements for this challenge were a little complicated for me because my oven (a) does not work below 160 degrees Celsius; and (b) does not cope with more than one tray in at a time.  To get over (b), I made massive meringues (I had 9 to Dorie's 30).  Tackling (a) was a little more difficult, and I ended up baking the meringues at 160 degrees the whole time instead of starting hotter and switching down.  Even then, my meringues took a good hour and a half to bake properly.

These meringues were well worth the trouble though - they were absolutely delicious, and disappeared so quickly that I am sure that there cannot be any calories in them.

Thanks to Mike for this week's pick - he will have the recipe, or check out Dorie's book, Baking From My Home To Yours.  And to check out what the other members of TWD thought of these  meringues, visit the LYL section of the TWD website. 

14 comments:

createwithmom said...

delicious looking meringues love to snack on these

Kayte said...

Oh those do look like fun...I love that they are so large! Princess skirts...what a fun description...very nice.

Lorraine @ Not Quite Nigella said...

That's a great way to describe them! They are very light and ballerina light at that! :D

Amanda said...

I love chocolate and meringues, so these would be a match made in heaven. I'm quite sure I need this recipe.

The Blonde Duck said...

The baked good version of a ballet skirt? Why haven't I tried this?

Flourchild said...

Great description of some wonderful looking cookies!

Nicole said...

I really liked these and mine baked in the specified time: but I did make mine a bit small. Mine were just a touch chewy in the center, just perfect!

Cindy said...

I made them today--they were delicious. I'm so glad Dorie pushes me out of my comfort zone.

Anonymous said...

Your massive meringues look great! That's a bummer that you can only get one tray in your oven though.

Lauren Hairston said...

I think they look amazing. Normally, I totally hate merengue, but I've never had anything but the basic egg white and sugar variety. Cocoa and almonds could definitely change my mind!

TeaLady said...

Love your description of the meringues. Cute!!

And they were good too.

margot said...

The meringues look wonderful! Your description is making me sorry I didn't make them.

Anonymous said...

These look great! Never heard of chocolate meringues!

Jennifer said...

I absolutely LOVED these. Yours look amazing!!!!