A recipe for Chocolate Chip Teardrop Cookies. This delicious cookie is a baked meringue with chocolate chips added to provide a bit of flavour contrast. Happy baking.

Read more: Chocolate Chip Meringue Teardrop Cookies

In my personal quest to make new family Christmas memories, by recreating family recipes, I have been updating my Christmas baking countdown. Today, I have baked meringue teardrop cookies, dotted with chocolate chips! Yum.

Teardrop Cookies Freeze Well

These cookies keep for the least time of all the treats we have been baking – about two weeks or so if kept in a sealed container – however – if I make them well before Christmas, I freeze them. They keep very well that way – and the men of my house never think to look in the basement freezer for treats – so they are safe until Christmas.

Reimagining Recipes

This recipe is another “reimagined” recipe. That is, my husband described these luscious treats to me based on his memories – and then I made them, by tweaking one of my mom’s baked meringue treats!

Teardrop Cookies

These cookies are little meringues, dropped by the spoonful onto a prepared baking sheet, which makes a “teardrop” shape. You can also play with the shape of these cookies by using a piping bag if you prefer – but we LOVE these cookies as teardrops!

Meringue Cookies

Is that a teardrop cookie or am I wrong? (Meringue). I love puns, and the best thing about these cookies is that I get to use that pun every time I serve them!

It seems a little daunting to prepare a meringue and then bake it – but these cookies are fairly simple. You only need 4 egg whites and four other ingredients – and they whip up quickly. They seem fancy – but they are simple.

Dairy Free

The primary ingredient in these cookies is the egg white – so obviously they are not vegan, but in this particular case we made them dairy free – but using dairy free chocolate chips. That’s a win for some of our guests!

MERINGUE TEARDROP COOKIE INGREDIENTS:

Four egg whites

1 heaping cup superfine granulated sugar

1 tsp cream of tartar

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Teardrop Cookie Substitutions:

What is Superfine Sugar and can I use regular sugar?

Superfine sugar is also known as baker’s special sugar, caster sugar or extra-fine sugar. It is just granulated white sugar, that has been ground into smaller pieces. This process allows the sugar to dissolve more quickly – which makes it great for making meringues. It’s not always easy to find at grocery stores – but you can substitute regular granulated sugar if necessary

To mimic the texture of superfine sugar, put granulated sugar in the blender – and give it a few pulses to reduce the crystal size.

What if I just substitute granulated sugar?

You can definitely just substitute regular white granulated sugar in this recipe without grinding it in the blender. The sugar doesn’t dissolve quite as well and there may be a touch of sugar texture on your tongue – but the cookies still come together well and taste just as awesome. Although superfine sugar is slightly denser than regular sugar, the difference in measurement isn’t really that great – so you can stay with a 1:1 substitution.

What if I have no Cream of Tartar?

Cream of Tartar is generally found in the baking/spices section of our grocery stores, but I don’t always have it on hand in my kitchen. The powder is a form of tartaric acid – a byproduct of wine making and grape fermentation. When used in making meringues, cream of tartar helps the egg whites to stabilize and form stiffer peaks. That said – it helps – it’s not required. If you decide not to use cream of tartar – go for it, you may have slightly less stiff peaks, but you may not even notice a difference.

Chocolate Chips

The chocolate chips aren’t necessary for a meringue cookie, but we enjoy the contrast between the light and crispy meringue and the yummy chocolate. For this year’s batch of cookies, we decided to use vegan chocolate chips – which we found fairly easily – so that the cookies could be dairy free. If you want to try something different, you could add a little coconut or some Christmas edible sprinkles.

CHOCOLATE CHIP MERINGUE TEARDROP COOKIE METHOD:

Line 3 cookie sheets with parchment paper. Move oven racks to middle to levels in oven. Preheat oven to 250 degrees F. When the meringues are prepared you want to put them quickly in the oven – all at once. In my oven, when I refer to the middle – that’s the upper two middle rack level. When the cookies are baked – my lower tray of cookies browns on the bottom faster than the upper tray – because they are closer to the gas flame. It’s even better if you can fit all of your cookies on one level!

In a tall sided mixing bowl, beat egg whites on high for about 3 minutes.

Make sure that the egg whites are well separated from the yolks. Getting a little bit of egg yolk into the whites will put fat from the yolks into the mix – and will make it difficult to create the foam necessary to create meringues!

Room temperature egg whites whip up more easily than cold egg whites!

Add in super-fine granulated sugar, vanilla and cream of tartar. Continue to beat at high speed – for another 3 minutes or more until stiff peaks form.

Quickly stir in chocolate chips. Do not over-stir.

Drop teaspoon size meringues onto parchment lined cookie sheets. Decorate tops of meringues with additional chocolate chips (I used one or two per cookie).

Place cookie sheets immediately in oven. Bake at 250 degrees F for 25 to 30 minutes. Leave cookies in the oven to cool – and turn off the oven after baking time is up! In other words, after the timer goes off and the cookies look just lightly browned leave the cookies in the oven to cool. DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN. This is to avoid the meringues cracking or falling. Leave the cookies in the oven for about 30 minutes to an hour.

Remove cookies from oven and allow them to continue to cool on the parchment paper on baking racks.

These cookies taste light and just a little sweet, with a nice “biting” contrast of chocolatey chips. They provide some variety from the traditional flour based Christmas cookies, so I hope you give them a try!

Have you baked Teardrop Cookies?

Below is a printable recipe card from RecipesGenerator. Please give it a try!

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