Chocolate Chip Meringue Cookies

My husband goes scuba diving pretty frequently. Whenever he goes, his dive buddy's wife always sends her husband off with enough delicious snacks to feed the entire boat (or at least it seems that way). My hubby is always raving about her cooking, especially her chocolate chip meringue cookies. Which she happen to send on sunday's dive trip. He was kind enough to bring home 2 of them for me to try, and indeed they were quite delicious.

I don't know if you've ever had these little puffs of air before or not, but they're just that puffs, like "air". You could probably eat about 100 of them before getting full. Okay, maybe not 100, but you get the point. Needless to say 2 cookies didn't do it for me yesterday, so off to the kitchen I went to whip up a batch.

The recipe I used is derived from this one here at SpryLiving. Except I modified it as follows:

Ingredients:
3 egg whites
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
1 cup of sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup mini chocolate chips

Instructions: 
1. Preheat oven to 200˚.

2. Combine egg whites, cream of tartar and vanilla extract with electric mixer til soft peaks form. Then gradually add sugar until stiff peaks form.

3. Fold in chocolate chips.

4. Line baking sheet with parchment. Drop dollops of mixture onto parchment or pipe shapes with pastry bag and tip. These cookies will remain in whatever shape they are added to the parchment as. They don't flatten, rise or smooth out or anything. I used a pastry bag with no tip.

My apologies for not taking pics til I put these in the oven, but you really don't need to see a mixer in a bowl right? Here's what they looked like when I put them in the oven:

And here's what they look like when the came out:

In fact I think they were better then following day, once the flavors combined a bit more. You can keep these in an airtight container or ziplock bag for up to a week. Enjoy!

4th of July Cookie Fruit Pizzas

I have to come up with another name for these then "Fruit Pizzas" because to me, fruit and pizza should never go together.

Nonetheless, We have Cookie Fruit Pizzas. This recipe came from my friend Nicole who make them for a BBQ of her own a year or two ago. I feel in love with them and have been waiting to make them for my own function every since!

4th of July is my father-in-law's birthday. Every year we celebrate at my in-law's house and watch the fireworks from their backyard with about 30 or so friends and family. This year I made 2 of these delicious cookie fruit desserts.

Ingredients go like this:
1 package of pre-made sugar cookie dough
1 bar of low fat cream cheese
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 of a can of sweetened condensed milk

Assorted fruits: kiwi, blueberries, strawberries, banana, peaches - whatever you like!

Instructions:
Line baking pan with parchment (I find parchment is the best thing ever when it comes to baking as the chance of burning things is much less and the chance of these items sticking to the pan is also much less. Invest in parchment!)

Preheat oven to 300˚ (I think the package says 350˚ but this cookie will be BIG so you don't want the edges to burn before the middle cooks all the way through. You'll want it to cook slow and even)

Pile the cookie dough into one ball and flatten it out slightly in the center of the parchment, it will do the rest on it's own. Then bake for about 30-35 minutes keeping an eye on it. Cookie is done when the edges are slightly browned and the center doesn't look raw anymore. Let cool on pan or wire rack.

Next up, Add cream cheese and brown sugar and combine with a mixer until smooth. Once cookie is cool spread frosting over top and decorate with fruit!

After this was finished I opted to drizzle a tiny bit of sweetened condensed milk across the top of each cookie. But this is not necessary. The dessert is plenty sweet on it's own. The only thing I would suggest is perhaps brushing the bananas with the condensed milk only so that they do not turn brown by the time you're ready to serve it.

Enjoy!

Momma Duke's Birthday..

So my amazing mom had another birthday. She was so busy the weekend of her actual birthday that we ended up celebrating it the following weekend. Which gave me more time to decide what to make. Since I've been sitting on a box of red velvet cake for awhile and it was burning a hole in my cabinet, I figured I better get to making it.

So this is nothing fancy, Store-bought box of red velvet cake, jar of cream cheese frosting. Heart Sprinkles.

I had some small 6" or 7" round pans, so I thought I'd just make a layer cake with many layers. I had to refill these pans twice in order to make all the layers.

Then, let them cook on a rack, and iced them up. After the first one, I ended up cutting the bumps off the tops because I realized I have to cram a lot of icing into the edges to make it smooth. 

Overall it came out quite good. Although in all fairness it's pretty hard to screw up a boxed cake. Happy Birthday Mom. xo