Chocolate Filled Coconut Meringues

Whenever I would see meringues at the grocery store I thought there is no way they would be tasty. They reminded me of something a Grandma would have in her cookie jar. Fast forward to last week when I stumbled on a recipe for chocolate filled raspberry meringue kisses, and BAM! For some odd reason I needed them in my oven immediately. I don't know if it was the fact that they were mini, involved chocolate, or that Sara said she loves meringues, but I longed for them in my life.

On my weekly trip to the grocery store I picked up a couple different extracts, coconut and strawberry to be exact. Raspberry was long gone. Since my husband loves anything coconut, and he's my unofficial (yet very official) taste tester, I thought I would give these babies a try with coconut flavor. It's cool right? We live in Hawaii and all..blame it  on the tropics! What's funny is growing up I strongly detested anything with coconut. I blame it on my mom, it's a "texture" thing for her. She never gave us things she didn't like. However, not until I married my man did I fall in love with this exotic flavor, and I guess I can get away with it living on this island!

Here's the recipe. I found it on one of my favorite dessert blogs, Save the Date for Cupcakes. You can check out the cuteness there, and I'm going to post my recipe below.

Chocolate Filled Coconut Mini Meringues- (adapted from Save the date for Cupcakes)

Ingredients:

4 egg whites

1 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

1 teaspoon coconut extract (or any flavor you wish)

Food coloring, optional

1/4 to 1/2 cup chocolate chips, optional

Preheat oven to 175 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or Silpat mats. Place chocolate chips about 1 1/2- to 2-inches apart on the sheet.

In a large bowl, or the bowl of a standing mixer, whisk together the egg whites, sugar, and cream of tartar. Place the bowl on top of a medium sauce pan filled with a couple of inches of barely simmering water and set over medium heat. Gently whisk the mixture constantly until the sugar dissolves. This can take up to 10 minutes. Once sugar is dissolved, remove,  add extract and food coloring if using and whisk the mixture on high until stiff peaks form.  Your peaks should not "curl" or bend.

Fill up your Pampered Chef (that's what I used) easy decorator thing 2/3 of the way with the meringue with the star tip. You can use a pastry bag with a Wilton #30 star tip (or comparable). Pipe small (3/4-inch-high) star shapes onto prepared baking sheets, centering each star on top of a chocolate chip. Refill decorator/bag as necessary.

Bake cookies until crisp but not brown, about 1 hour 40 minutes. Let cool completely on sheets on wire racks.