We celebrated the 4th of July over a few days, with all surrounding towns setting of fireworks on various nights. On the night of the 4th, we joined our neighbors out on the front lawn to watch our town’s fireworks go off nearby.
I vaguely recalled previous peanut butter creations going over well with our neighbors, so I decided to give these a shot. It took much longer than expected; my Kitchenaid’s whisk attachment doesn’t reach the bottom of the bowl, so the measly three egg whites didn’t stand a chance to get whipped on their own.
Thankfully, my husband is very inventive (and has a much better memory than I do), and he retrieved our emulsion blender and its whisk attachment! Cut to me standing over a bowl for much longer than should have been necessary to whip the eggs into stiff peaks. Lesson learned.
I wanted to keep these on the festive side (it is a national holiday, after all – with fireworks!) so we added sprinkles to the still-warm chocolate-dipped cookies. I really like how they turned out.
The original recipe-creator is right – make a double batch! At first I thought these would turn out more than enough cookies, but they are so delicious and quick to eat, it’s easy to eat too many in one sitting. You can really taste the peanut butter, and the chocolate and spinkles added a nice crunch to the otherwise soft meringue cookie.
My last tip is to watch the oven. Ours didn’t take nearly the time mentioned in the recipe to bake; maybe we made ours too thin? We baked them for about 15 minutes and removed them from the oven (instead of the 20 minutes for baking then 10-15 minutes sitting in the oven after it’s turned off) once we saw how brown they were getting. They ended up being a perfect texture. So just watch yours, and don’t be shy to taste-test!
I recently found out that you can adjust the height of the beater on your Kitchen Aid! Please forgive the cut and paste from the internet, but here you go:
Tilt-head models have a screw just below the area where the head is attached to the stand. You’ll need to unplug your mixer and tilt the head up to find the screw. A slight clockwise (right) turn will lower the beater and a counter-clockwise (left) motion will raise it.
Bowl-lift models have an adjustment screw on the lower portion of the stand and you’ll need to place the bowl lift handle in the down position to see it, after unplugging the unit. The adjustment to lower the beater is clockwise (right) and counter-clockwise(left) to raise it.
All that being said, your husband’s idea sounds better (doesn’t mess with your mixer!), but in case you ever need it, I figured it would be good info to have! :)