I got a cute idea of peppermint meringues online (thanks to my wonderful support group that shares recipes for those of us who are GF/DF and some soy free). I don’t have experience in meringues so I had a little trouble with them setting up and therefore had trouble piping them out into cute little star shapes so basically they were piped into mini piles of what my kids described as dog poop. Hey…… it was cute dog poop and I had two flavors vanilla and peppermint and I even swirled in red to make them look like little peppermint candies. over all they worked well…..time consuming and hard to pipe but addictive and wow did it make a lot of cookies! (okay more like cookie buttons but still cookies) I found myself almost eating them like popcorn so I had to put them away out of my reach for a while but then everyone else kept digging in. A success. Not sugar-free or egg free but definitely gluten, dairy and soy free.

start out with the basic meringue cookie. 3 egg whites, 1/4 tsp cream of tarter and 1/4 tsp of extract (peppermint, vanilla, etc) beat until soft peaks,   and then slowly add in 3/4 cup sugar until shiny and stiff. I then took a piping bag and rubbed some red food coloring in three lines up the bag and added my peppermint meringue mixture. the idea was then to pipe it with your star tip and make them look like stars but mine were little piles of swirled mix. I then made a vanilla batch and on them I sprinkled them with cocoa powder. both were awesome.  Bake these at a 220 degree oven for 1.5 hours then let set in the oven while off until dry, don’t open the oven for a few hours or you will loose the heat that helps them dry up to the famous crunchy cookie.

A nice Christmas cookie that I will probably leave at just that a Christmas cookie that is made yearly.  And what was your favorite cookies this year??????

the picture to the left is this year’s meringues, They turned out very well!