Itty Bitty Meringue Cookies

little vanilla meringue cookies

Last week I made amazing lemon curd. I used the Martha Stewart recipe which calls for 4 egg yolks. So what do I do with egg whites? Do I make a low fat egg white omelet? No, that sounds disgusting. I will make meringues.

Meringues are OK. I would not say they are the bees knees, but they are fun and a nice change from fatty traditional cookies.

I used the Joy of cooking recipe. You can find any recipe on line but it is nice having a food bible in the kitchen that you can trust.

Ingredients:

• 3 egg whites
• 1/4 tsp cream of tartar
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3/4 tsp vanilla

Combine the egg whites, tartar and salt and beat until soft peaks form. Gradually add in the sugar and then the vanilla. Beat until the mixture is shiny and stiff peaks form. But do not over beat it! Put the mixture in a pipping bag and pipe nickle sized blobs onto parchment lined baking sheets. Bake for 45 min at 250F. Then turn off the oven and leave them in there for another 30min.

I like to use old milk bags as pipping bags.

milk bag = pastry bag

I baked mine for 40min and I think that was overkill for such small meringues. These are so small I bet they do not need much more than 30min with the oven on.

Geekery2 (Polymer Clay Zelda Magnets)

polymer clay Hyrule shield

 

I just spent an awful amount of time making a miniature shield. It probably took 3 hours to condition the clay and cut out all the pieces with a scalpel. If I wanted to make miniature shields for a living I would have to sell them for $100/shield to make it worth my time! Oh, and some how find a miniature shield market.  On Etsy I just saw Hylian shield earrings, the size of a penny, selling for a couple bucks. Either that person pays themselves a sweatshop hourly rate or I am doing something wrong and there is a much easier way to make this shield.

To make this shield I needed:

• Polymer clay (blue, silver, gold, red)
• Glaze 
• Scalpel for cutting out the shapes.

Hylian shield out of polymer clay

Polymer clay Zelda magnets.

If I ever try to make this shield again, I will make a cardboard template first. I would also roll out the clay then chill it. My sweaty giant hands tend to turn clay into soup while I am trying to work with it.

N64 controller and Zelda magnets

In total I made a Hyrule shield, rupees, the blue cucco and the magic beans (above).

Miniature Shield Model