With these Chocolate Cherry Meringue Cookies, I’m reinventing the classic chocolate chip cookie with the help of Semi-Sweet chocolate chip morsels!
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Meringues
If you’ve never had Meringue Cookies, you’re in for a really special treat! The outside of these Meringue Cookies gets crisp, while the center is soft and chewy. They are filled with rich chocolate flavor (some of that comes from the Semi-Sweet Morsels), which just makes them melt in your mouth!
Cherry and chocolate are such a wonderful combination for the holidays too. These Chocolate Cherry Meringue Cookies are like biting into one of the crispy-ist yet chewy-ist fudgy-ist chocolaty-ist cookie ever!
Besides the new flavor and texture, you’ll notice that meringues have a different baking method than you may be used to. These bake in a low oven for a couple hours, then you turn the oven off and leave them to cool for a little while. Easy peasy! I’ve even left them in the oven (with the oven off), and gone to bed. They cool over night.
I like to mix these Meringue Cookies so that they have pretty streaks of white and dark. So they have some variety and texture. Don’t worry if you have little bits that aren’t all mixed in, just get most everything mixed but still leave some streaks.
You can also pipe these meringues out using a pastry bag, but you really don’t have to go to that trouble. I like the free form look of them. Dan said they reminded him of molten lava, in how they have different colors and textures and look like they are flowing. I agree. So, don’t bother piping them out. They are super fun this way, and Santa will be really happy to get these on his cookie plate!
Cherry Recipes
Cherries are such a wonderful summertime fruit. If you need more cherries in your life, check out these delicious cherry recipes. You’ll love them!
- Cherry Bread with Dark Chocolate Glaze
- Yogurt Cherry Cloud Pie with Granola Crust
- Cherry Scotch Sipper
- Lime Cherry Jam
- Cherry Balsamic Glazed Salmon
- Double Cherry Popsicles
- Cherry Lambic Granita
For these little Chocolate Cherry Meringue Cookies I recommend using Dutch-Process Cocoa instead of regular unsweetened cocoa. Dutch-process cocoa (or European-style cocoa) has been treated with alkali to yield a deeper, neutral, less acidic, and mellower flavor than natural or unsweetened cocoa. Want to read more about the difference between Dutch-process and natural.
Semi-Sweet Morsels are so much fun! They add just the right hit of deep rich chocolate to these meringue cookies, making them super fudgy and delicious!
I make my meringues with a tablespoon or soup spoon so that they are a little larger, about 3 bites worth. You can also make them smaller with teaspoons. The large size yields about 30-32 cookies (um, I may have lost count of the cookies as I ate, er I mean, photoed them!). The smaller size yields about 48 cookies.
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Chocolate Cherry Meringue Cookies Recipe
Chocolate Cherry Meringue Cookies
Ingredients
- ¼ cup slivered almonds
- 1 cup sugar divided use
- 5 tablespoons Dutch-process cocoa powder
- 3 tablespoons cornstarch
- ¼ cup dried cherries chopped
- ½ cup Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
- 4 large egg whites
- ¼ teaspoon cream of tartar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Spread almonds on a baking sheet, and bake until lightly toasted, about10 minutes. Let cool.
- Reduce the oven temperature to 200° F. Line 2 large baking sheets with Silpats or parchment paper.
- Place the toasted almonds and 1/3 cup of sugar in the bowl of a food processor, and pulse until finely chopped. Add cocoa and cornstarch and pulse just until mixed. Transfer cocoa almond mixture to a medium bowl, and stir in chopped dried cherries and Chocolate Chips until just combined.
- In a large bowl, beat egg whites with an electric mixer on low speed just until frothy. Add cream of tartar, and increase the mixer speed to medium, and beat until soft peaks form. Gradually add the remaining 2/3 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons at a time, beating until the whites form firm but still moist peaks. Add vanilla extract, and beat just until blended.
- Gently fold the cocoa mixture into the beaten whites in 2 additions, just until blended.
- Using two spoons, drop the batter by heaping teaspoon fulls onto the prepared baking sheets, spacing the cookies 1-inch apart.
- Bake, using both oven racks, for 1 ½ hours at 200° F, alternate the position of the pans and rotate back to front halfway through baking time. Turn off the oven and let the meringues cool in the oven for 1 hour, then peel them off the Silpat or parchment paper.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutritional information is based on third-party calculations, and should be considered estimates. Actual nutritional content will vary based on brands used, measuring methods, portion sizes, and more.
I have never baked meringue cookies! These look so tasty I will have to make them!
Love, love, love chocolate cookies!!
My mom used to always make meringues but they were never chocolate! We missed out! LOL Yum!
My mom used to bake meringues! They’re so delicious.
Such an intriguing sounding recipe! I absolutely love this idea – I just with we could get decent chocolate chips in the UK!
Oh wow, these cookies look so good!
These sound amazing! Yum!
love meringue cookies!
These look so good. I haven’t had a meringue cooking in eons, but love the addition of cherry.
Love the spin on these, they sound AMAZING!!!! Thanks for Linking up with us at #TryABiteTuesday! Come join in again this week, the link up is open!
These look amazing!
Scrumptious!
Meringue cookies melt in your mouth! Love the flavor combination in this cookie!
So glad you recently shared this, I can’t wait to give this a try, love the chocolate and cherry combo and you can be sure I will not be using a piping bag, the spoons will be the perfect tools! Thanks for sharing your recipe.