Meringue mushroom instructions

• Pre-heat your oven to 225ºF and line a baking sheet with parchment paper
• Bring 2 inches of water to a simmer in a pot. Place a clean stainless steel mixing bowl over the water. It shouldn't touch the water. 
• Combine your egg whites and sugar and whisk to combine. Occasionally whisk as it's heating to distribute the heat and dissolve the sugar.  
• Once your egg whites are at 110ºF (or when you don't feel any grains of sugar between your fingers) you're read to whip
• Place the bowl on your stand mixer with the whisk attachment. Whisk on med for one minute, add in cream of tartar, salt and flavoring. 
• Bump up to high and let whip until you reach STIFF peaks. 
• Now you are ready to pipe your meringue onto a parchment-lined baking sheet into your mushrooms!

  Note: make sure your parchment sits completely flat on your baking sheet by placing dollops of meringue under each corner and pressing it flat against the pan.
• Place piping tip into a piping bag. Fill your bag with your meringue.
• To make the caps of the mushrooms, hold your piping bag straight up and down and squeeze to form the mushroom cap and pull up. There will be a little peak and that is okay, we will take care of that in a minute.
• Once you have formed all your caps, use a tiny bit of water on your finger tip and gently smooth the top of the meringues.
• For the stems, you hold your piping bag straight up and down again, touch the tip to the parchment, squeeze a bit to attach the meringue to the parchment then slowly move your hand up while squeezing. The base should be a bit thicker than the top. Make your stems about 2" tall.
• Bake for about 2 hours, then turn off the oven but do not take them out. Let them sit in the oven until they are completely cold. I leave mine in overnight. 
• Meringue mushrooms can be stored in a ziplock bag unrefrigerated for up to two weeks.