Double Chocolate Meringues

Don't make these. They're amazing and addicting and so so very evil.

Then again, eating a plate of these isn't as bad as eating a plate of normal double chocolate cookies. So if you're in the habit of eating full plates of cookies anyway, you might as well try these!

Start by preheating your oven to 350.

The ingredients: 3 egg whites (should be about 1/3 cup), 2 tbsp cocoa powder, 1/3 cup sugar, 3/4 tsp vanilla, 5oz semisweet chocolate (I used 5 squares of Baker's Semisweet).

Melt 3oz of chocolate. Chop the other 2oz up pretty small, but set it aside for later. If you use a microwave for this, only heat for about 30 seconds at a time, and stir between each round.

Beat your egg whites. Beat on low for the first 30 seconds, then move it up to medium once soft peaks have started to form. When you increase the speed, start adding the sugar a couple of tablespoons at a time, beating constantly. Add in the vanilla and beat for another minute or two.

These are not soft peaks. See how they stand up straight? This is how you know it's done. Time to add the chocolate!

Fold it in carefully. You don't want to deflate the egg whites! I think I deflated mine a little bit too much. My mistake: mixing the cocoa powder in with the melted chocolate. It made it way to stiff. You should fold in the melted chocolate (make sure it's still kind of runny) and then mix the cocoa powder with the chopped chocolate, and fold them in carefully.

The recipe said that this would make 40 2-inch cookies. I definitely only got 16, and I'm somewhat confident that they weren't 4+ inches.

Bake them for about 12 minutes. If you have more than one pan, one should be in the lower third of the oven and the other should be in the upper third. You should switch the pans halfway through the baking time.

Lucky for us, we're making chewy meringues here, not the kind that feel like styrofoam. So you don't have to wait nearly as long for them! Yay!

Move the cookies to a cooling rack and enjoy while they're still a little bit warm. They taste amazing!

They probably shouldn't have settled as much as mine did. I blame it partially on deflating the egg whites too much while mixing in the chocolate, and partially on the fact that I left out the cream of tartar, which helps stabilize whipped egg whites.

For the official recipe, click here.