a meringue adventure.

after so many high calorie sweets at chris's birthday party on sunday, i decided that i needed to distract myself from the leftovers with something equally as sweet but not as horrible for my tummy.

when we joined weight watchers last year, at our first meeting in the little magazine thing was a recipe for chocolate and vanilla meringue cookies and i made them almost immediately.  they were perfect and awesome and i was very proud.

that had never happened again.

for mandy's birthday last year, she had a wonderland party and wanted meringue mushroom cookies.  those came out alright.  definitely mushroom shaped but not as good as that first batch.  also that year for chris's birthday, he made root beer cupcakes with root beer syrup that we found in the baking aisle at walmart.  so with the leftover meringue from the mushrooms, i decided to make some root beer flavored by replacing the vanilla extract with a tiny bit of root beer syrup.

that doesn't really work.

but i didn't learn my lesson.

today i though i would fix this problem by using a tiny bit of vanilla extract and a tiny bit of the remaining hazelnut syrup i use in my coffee.

first off, this recipe is supposed to make 44 adorable meringue cookies at about a half a point each.  mine made about 20 huge meringue cookies at at least one point, maybe one and a half.

they're huge.  wtf?

and when i pulled them out of the oven there were delicious crunchy bubbles all over the place that tasted exactly like my hazelnut syrup.  one of the pans was too big for one sheet of foil, so i had to overlap two.  and underneath the flap where they overlapped, guess what i found.

delicious hazelnut syrup.

the same delicious hazelnut syrup that i BEAT INTO MY MERINGUES was now crunchy bubbles and puddles under the foil rather than a flavoring in my cookies.

HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN i need some baking scientist to explain this to me.

and no, my meringues taste nothing like hazelnut.  they are still sweet and delicious from the vanilla and the sugar but with none of the tasty nuttiness that i longed for. . .

peace.