Wind Cookies

There is a lovely bakery that my Mom and I started frequenting when I was in high school.  It was always such a special treat to go there and get our favorite cookies called Wind Cookies.  We would also go there with my high school friends and moms for special occasions and lunch dates.  It is such a magical little place once you walk through the doors.  Everything seems just as it should be.  The fluffy sugary smell of cakes, cookies, and other dessert treats, makes me feel like I am in CandyLand when I think of it.

So this year for my Mom's birthday, I tried recreating the famous wind cookies.  They are basically a dense meringue cookie.  And you can either get it plain, or filled with coconut, chocolate chips and nuts.  So of course, we liked the latter.  One of the best parts about them too, is the little pockets of carmelized sugar you sometimes bite into, which I zoomed into in the the above picture.

While I was making them, I snacked on some chocolate chips and coconut.  Yum!  You can put all of the additions (chocolate chips, coconut, nuts) into this recipe, or you can just add one or two.  Or you can leave them all out for a simpler, lighter fare.  You can also substitute the vanilla extract with almond extract.  I am not really one for food coloring, but you could add some for different colored cookies too.  A side note too is that the recipe below was taken from myrecipes.com and I cut it in half.  So you can double it if you are making for a larger group.

Wind Cookies

Recreated from bakery and adapted from myrecipes.com

Makes 12-20 cookies, depending on size

1 large egg white

1/8 tsp cream of tartar

1/3 cup sugar

1/8 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 cup chocolate chips (Ghirardelli are good!)

3 Tbsp shredded coconut

3 Tbsp chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 275 degrees.  In a large bowl, using a hand mixer, beat egg white and cream of tartar until thick and foamy. Gradually add sugar, a spoonful at a time, and continue to beat until mixture holds stiff, shiny peaks.  Stiff shiny peaks occur when you pull the beater (while turned off) from the mixture, and the peaks stay up and keep their shape.  This will take awhile! 

With a spatula, carefully fold in the vanilla, chocolate chips, coconut and pecans.  Spoon mixture into a pastry bag or if you don't have one, use a large ziptop plastic bag with a small corner cut out to pipe mixture through.  For small cookie, pipe about a tablespoon's worth of batter onto parchment lined baking sheet.  Keep cookies at least 1" apart from each other.  This is where you can choose the size of cookie you want.  So pipe more or less!

Bake until the cookies are firm and dry to the touch on the outside, about 25-30 minutes.  You can either pull out of oven and let cool on a rack, or leave in turned off oven overnight.  I chose the latter, and then was able to wake up the next morning and package them in the birthday box.  As a side note, they travel well!!