Oh Christmas time, how I love thee!  And all the baking that goes with it.  Tonight I made Toffee Bars, Vanilla Meringue Drop cookies, and Raspberry Chocolate Meringue cookies...below find the recipe for the Mint Meringues compliments of Betty Crocker...  I use Vanilla instead of mint, and also used my sweet Pampered Chef Easy Accent Decorator to pipe that meringue.

• PREP TIME
  20 min
• TOTAL TIME
  2 hr 25 min
• SERVINGS
  48

 

2

egg whites

1/4

teaspoon cream of tartar

1/8

teaspoon salt

1/2

cup sugar

1/4

teaspoon mint extract

3

to 5 drops green food color

Betty Crocker® multicolored candy sprinkles, if desired

• 1Heat oven to 200°F. Grease 2 large cookie sheets with shortening or cooking spray. In small bowl, beat egg whites, cream of tartar and salt with electric mixer on medium speed until foamy. On high speed, add sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, beating until sugar is dissolved, meringue is glossy and very stiff peaks form. Beat in mint extract. With rubber spatula, fold in food color, 1 drop at a time, until well blended and desired color.
• 2Use disposable decorating bag or gallon-size food storage plastic bag with 1/2-inch hole cut in one bottom corner of bag (if desired, fit large star tip in decorating bag or in hole of plastic bag). Spoon meringue into bag; twist top of bag to seal. Squeeze bag to pipe meringue into 1-inch puffs onto cookie sheets. Sprinkle each with candy sprinkles.
• 3Bake on middle oven rack 2 hours. Immediately remove cookies from cookie sheets; place on wire racks. Cool completely, about 5 minutes.
• Link to Betty Crocker Site Recipe

These are the Raspberry Chocolate ones, baking away :)
For the raspberry, I used 1/4 teaspoon Raspberry candy flavoring and just beat that in after the stiff peaks formed, I also finely grated some chocolate, you can use semi sweet or dark chocolate.  And also beat that in before piping on to parchment paper lined cookie sheets.

Nice light pink meringue, also light raspberry taste.  The speckles are the fine grated chocolate.
They turned out perfect!

OMG its been 2 weeks and so much has happened!  Finals went well...Respiratory - PASS  Cardiology - PASS  Paramedic Fundamentals - PASS Pharmacology - final on Monday :)
So even though I have had class, finals, clinicals, work, holiday shopping and all that jazz I decided to make all my fellow Paramedic students a little holiday gift...

I was able to find some inexpensive glass ornaments, I filled them with some buffalo snow.  It is shiny and fun.  I chose to go with blue wintry wonderland theme lol.  So I added Blue fine glitter, just poured in until i liked it.  I glued 2 black feathers, they have a little iridescent bluish green on the ends.  I found some silver snowflake garland for a mini tree...I cut that up and glued that to the top of the feathers...just enough so there is some movement,  I added a jingle bell by tying it around the neck of ornament.  I secured the top back on, after I tied on a ribbon.  I also added a black glittery letter to complete that custom "just for you" monogram gift :)
So after that I got to looking at them and decided to add another bow...I centered it over the letter, on top of the feathers.  This helped to hide the end of the feathers and gave it a more complete look.  Sorry I didn't take step by step photos...maybe I will have to make some more!