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Meringue Puffs--An Easier Way

1 pound of granulated sugar. 8 whites of eggs. Flavoring extract. 3 drops of acetic acid, or a pinch of tartaric. or a little lemon juice. Put half the whites in a bowl without beating, and all the sugar with them and beat together with a wooden spoon or paddle. It may save half the labor and insures success to have all the utensils and ingredients quite cold to begin with. It quickens the process if the beating can be done with two paddles, using both hands as regular workmen do. The bowl should be a deep one holding two quarts.

The sugar and egg at first are as stiff as dough. Beat rapidly and constantly for about 15 minutes, when it should be white and rather firm cake icing. Now add the remaining 4 whites of egg, one at a time, and beat a few minutes between each one, but before the last one is added put in the acid and the flavoring.

The whole time of beating is about 25 minutes. An essential point is to beat the icing after the addition of each white until it will again draw up in peaks after the paddle is lifted from it, except the last white which should not be beaten much as it forms the gloss and smoothness on the meringues when they are baked.

Drop this meringue paste in egg shapes on baking pans instead of on paper as in the last receipt, and these being made with granulated sugar instead of powdered do not need any sugar sifted over, they look better without. Bake in a very slow oven till pale straw color and dry. They slip from the pans easily when cold.

Cut out the thin bottom crusts with a penknife, and fill the meringues with whipped cream sweet, ened and flavored, or with wine jelly, and either place two together by the bottoms or join them two together side by side with melted candy or icing, like an open walnut shell, and pile wipped cream or chopped jelly upon them. These meringues likewise look well singly as cups filled with bright jellies of different colors and with ice creams. Instead of placing the meringue paste on the pans with spoon and knife it is much better to use the sack and tube, such as lady-fingers are made with--a funnel shaped canvas bag with a tin tube in the pointed end, the tube about 1/2 inch in diameter at the narrow end for these. Fill the sack with the paste and press it out in the size and shape desired. Rose Meringue Puffs. Having made the meringue raste according to the preceding directions, color it, or a part of it, of a delicate pink and flavor with rose extract. Drop with the sack and tube pieces like large marbles on baking pans previously greased and then wiped dry, and bake slowly without color. These rise rounded and nearly hollow and have a gauzy appearance when rightly baked. Sometimes the first panful of any of these varieties put into the range will run together and melt and come out worthless, and the next come out perfect meringues, or one side of a pan will be spoiled and the remainder good. This shows that the baking is the critical part of the making, and that is what we never can teach by word of mouth. At a certain gentle heat the egg in the meringues cooks and dries in shape, but at a higher degree the sugar melts and runs to candy in bubbles. At an insufficient degree of heat the meringue dries as it would in the sun and does not swell and change its appearance. In the brick oven after the bread has been withdrawn is the proper place to bake meringues.