Cinnamon Meringues with Toasted Almond

Meringues are just beautiful little treats. Made from fluffy egg whites that are whipped into billowy stiff peaks, they can be a transport vehicle for different spices and flavors. If you really want to go all out, you can add some food coloring to the egg whites before you form the cookies and let your playful side appear. One piece of advice I have to give here, make sure the color you pick matches the flavors that your going to use. Studies have shown that people do in fact interpret different flavors depending on the colors they see. In a blind taste test the same vanilla cake with different color frostings all tasted like vanilla. When the person was allowed to see the cakes and the variety of colored frostings, each piece tasted different even though it was the same cake they called out as vanilla just moments ago. So, in short, if your using cinnamon flavors, do not color your Meringues with yellow but go for a red instead. Lavender pieces in your Meringue? Purple is your color. Try to follow this guideline unless you want to mess with peoples minds, while your at that, you might as well make some cocktails to pair with the cookies to keep things really interesting.

These particular cookies, are kept a simple white to let the toppings speak for themselves. Once the beat egg whites get the proper dosage of holiday inspired spices such as cinnamon, freshly grated nutmeg, and a dash of vanilla, they are topped with toasted almond slices and bakes low and slow to allow them to dry out. Since these are quite large cookies, they outside crisps up but the middle is left a tad soft, almost like a mini Pavlova. Once you crunch through the shell, it immediately disintegrates in your mouth and explodes with all the spices. To make it even more playful, the almonds added on top make you want to chew, a real explosion of flavor and texture which I am all about.