Gastronomy612′s Weblog

Another Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur has passed and we are now in the year 5770.  The only unfortunate aspect of this of course is the absence of hover boards.  The great thing is that we did not have to eat yet another honey cake (despite the raves I got on mine last year) and instead had an array of desserts to compliment the Kugel bake off and Greek salad, among other dishes.  Because I have been all about meringue the past three months, I made thyme meringue cookies and I figured adding boozy and honey coated apples to the tops satisfied the “sweet New Year” element of the holiday.

First I made the boozy apples.  The recipe called for Golden Delicious, but when it comes to baking I’m all Granny Smith, all. of. the. time.  It’s a safe apple to use in that it holds up well and is able to incorporate a lot of flavor; in this case Maker’s Mark and honey.

After the thyme was de-sprigged, I was able to just throw it in the food processor with the walnuts and powdered sugar.  I made sure that the nuts were finely ground as to not destroy the meringue upon mixing.

boozy apples Isn't thyme beautiful? It certainly isn't the most fun to strip off it's branches (branches?), but it smells divine.

However I had a difficult time getting the meringue just right.  The first time I over-beat the egg whites to too stiff a consistency – it was scrapped.  The second time I beat the egg whites to the correct consistency but thought to try an experiment where I continued whisking in the dry ingredients.  The only result was a soupy, nasty mess – it was scrapped.  The third time, was a success because I incorporated the nut/sugar/thyme mixture with the meringue correctly by folding it in to itself with a spatula.  This ensured that the meringue did not completely deflate and there were not dry ingredient patches.

After it was all incorporated, I spooned some batter out on to a Silpat and topped each blob with a couple pieces of apple.  Meringue needs to baked for a long time on a very low temperature.  Do not be worried that these cookies will burn or catch fire or being in the oven so long.  The bake time ensures that they dry out properly but maintain a marshmallowy inside.

I was slightly disappointed that that the weight of the apples forced the cookies to cave since it did not add much presentation value.  They did not garner as much praise as last year’s honey cake (I’ll just pretend that a lot of people had nut allergies), but they were certainly tasty.