Christmas meringue cookies

Green Christmas meringue cookies shaped and decorated like Christmas trees.

With a little green food coloring and egg whites, build a fluffy forest of Christmas meringue cookies shaped like trees. You can create a unified stand of ever-tasty evergreens or make each tree unique with your own dazzling decorative flourishes. These Christmas meringue cookies make it easy to grow the holiday spirit at every gathering.

Yield: About 12 cookies

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Ingredients

8 large egg whites
2 cups sugar
½ tsp. cream of tartar
Green food coloring
1 tsp. almond extract
12 ginger wafer cookies or ginger snaps
Decorative white sprinkles

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 200°F.
  2. Place egg whites, sugar and cream of tartar in a heatproof bowl. Set bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Whisk constantly until sugar is dissolved and whites are warm to the touch, about 3 to 4 minutes.
  3. Take bowl from saucepan, add 1 or 2 drops of green food coloring, and beat mixture with an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, starting on low speed. Gradually increase speed to high while beating until stiff, glossy peaks form—about 5 to 7 minutes. Add almond extract, and then mix until combined.
  4. Transfer mixture to a pastry bag fitted with a large round pastry tip. Pipe a small cone shape on top of each wafer cookie. Place in oven and bake with oven door open for 30 minutes. Turn oven off and leave in oven for another 30 minutes, still keeping the oven door open.
  5. Remove cookies from oven. Add sprinkles to each cookie.
Get into the holly-jolly spirit with even more Christmas cookies!