These little cookies – described by one friend as tasting like a cookie within a cookie – are really a mixture between a meringue and a cookie. Hence they’ve become known at home, where they’re immensely popular, as Merookies, and are ideal with a cup of coffee after dinner. They are called “forgotten” as, just like the ‘Forgotten Pudding’ in Nigella Express, they are not baked, but put in a hot oven, which you immediately turn off, leaving the cookies to bake in the fading residual heat overnight. I find it all too easy actually to forget them, and always put a post-it sticker on the oven to remind me they’re in there, so I don’t burn them to a cinder by preheating the oven to cook something else in it the next day.
PREPARATION TIME: Less than 30 mins
COOKING TIME: Over 2 Hours
SERVES: 12-14 Cookies
INGREDIENTS
- 2 large free-range egg whites, at room temperature
- pinch fine sea salt
- 100g/3½oz caster sugar
- 1 tsp cornflour
- 1 tsp cider vinegar or white wine vinegar
- ¼ tsp ground cardamom
- 75g/2½oz mini dark chocolate chips
- 75g/2½oz pistachios, finely chopped
METHOD
- Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4 and line a large baking tray with baking paper. Whisk together the egg whites and salt in a grease-free bowl, until you have soft peaks. Whisk in the sugar a little at a time until thick and gleaming.
- By hand, fold in the cornflour, vinegar and cardamom, then add the chocolate chips and most of the pistachios and very gently fold these in too.
- With a spoon, drop mounded blobs of the mixture, 4–5cm/2in in diameter, onto the prepared tray. Sprinkle with the remaining pistachios.
- Put the cookies into the oven, shut the door and turn off the oven immediately. Let the cookies sit in the turned-off oven overnight.
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BBC Food - Nigella Lawson
