Flavoured meringue cookies

1. preheat oven to 225F

2. make sure the bowls and beaters are dry and clean. leftover oil, grease or moisture will deflate the meringue and prevent it from making peaks. it's also better to use glass or stainless steel bowls (not plastic)

3. using the whisk attachment on a stand or handheld mixer beat the beat egg whites in a large bowl until frothy, about 45 seconds. i used my stand mixer for the first part of the recipe, and switched out to the hand mixer after dividing it up for the individual flavours.

4. add cream of tartar; beat at medium speed until soft peaks form, about 5 minutes.

5. increase speed to medium-high. add sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, beating until sugar is dissolved and stiff peaks form, about 3-5 minutes.

6. divide out the meringue evenly to how many flavours you were making. i divided mine up into four, finished the raspberry (pink) one in the stand mixer and used smaller bowls and the hand mixer for the mint (green), vanilla (purple) and lemon (yellow) ones.

7. add food colouring until desired colour reached, add extracts to flavour and beat back up to firm/stiff peak stage. make sure the whisk is dry and clean before beating each flavour. for a recipe divided up for four flavours i used about 10 drops of food colouring and 1/2 teaspoon of extract for each flavour.

8. line baking sheets with parchment paper

9. using a piping bag, or sandwich bag fitted with a piping tip (or just cut the corner off for the size you want) pipe out 1 inch cookies spaced a few centimeters apart on the baking sheets. (using sandwich bags made for easy clean up and no need to wash and dry a piping bag in between flavours)

10. bake meringues for 1 hour. then turn the oven off and leave the meringues to stand in the oven for 1- 2 hours. no peeking! then remove to cooling racks for about 15 minutes.

11. enjoy! or pack up into air tight containers

12. P.S the blue ones are berry flavoured and made with jello- see "jello meringue cookies"-