I’ve been holding onto a pint carton of liquid egg whites in case I ran out of eggs, but since I’ve got plenty of fresh eggs I wanted to try to use them to make meringues. I had never had a meringue until last week, and realized they have that dry, chalky texture you find in freeze-dried ice cream, which I love. I found this recipe from Lemons for Lulu when I was looking for things to do with cherry syrup.

The difference between fresh egg whites and the ones that come in a carton is the ones in the carton are pasteurized. This makes them more difficult to whip, so I doubled the amount of cream of tartar* in the recipe. Half a cup of egg whites is about four eggs’ worth. The egg whites are whipped first with cream of tartar and salt*, then the sugar* is gradually added, followed by some cherry syrup and red food coloring*, until stiff peaks form.

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Since I didn’t have a piping bag, I tried to make one out of a plastic bag by ironing the plastic shut then cutting an “M” shape in the end to make a star tip. The ironing worked, but unfortunately, the plastic was too soft to shape the meringue (it might have worked with a heavier bag or a paper piping bag), and the meringue was too soft to hold its shape. I hadn’t beaten the eggs long enough, I guess, and the meringues flattened into smooth little rounds.

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The meringues take two hours to bake; the first hour with the oven at 225°F and then another hour with the oven off and the door shut. You’re dehydrating them, basically. Then I melted some chocolate chips and, since the cookies were too flat to dip the bottoms, dipped one side of each meringue.

The lower pan came out a little burnt (lightly toasted is burnt, in the case of meringues) and sunken, but the cookies on the top pan were all about right.

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*store-bought ingredients