Forgotten cookies are a sweet and simple meringue cookie recipe that everyone loves! Egg whites and sugar combine to make light and crisp cookies with tiny pools of chocolate throughout.
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This Forgotten Cookies recipe is one of my all-time favorite cookie recipes. I generally make them around the holidays - they were always a Christmas Eve treat at our house, but they're good all year round. I absolutely love anything with meringue, and these delicious treats are no exception.
The cookies require a little bit of work up front to get the meringue going, but once that's done, you just put them in the oven, and forget about them! Hence the name! Don't worry - they don't burn!
They're also naturally dairy free and gluten free!
Other Recipes To Try and Love
If you're into easy cookies, give No Bake Cookies a try! And if you want something a bit more traditional, try Oreo Chocolate Chip Cookies. If you want your chocolate fix in bar form, get after these Marshmallow Swirl Brownies.
Ingredients Needed:
Forgotten Cookies are essentially chocolate chip meringue cookies, and they only require a few simple ingredients. You probably have most of the ingredients if not all of them on hand.
- Large Egg Whites (room temperature)
- White sugar
- Pinch of Salt
- Vanilla Extract
- Mini Chocolate Chips
- Cream of Tartar (optional but recommended)
Full ingredient amounts in the recipe card below.
PRO TIP: I like to use superfine sugar for this recipe. You can usually buy superfine sugar in the grocery store, but if you don't want to buy it, you can make your own by blitzing granulated sugar in the bowl of a food processor for 5-10 seconds. Superfine sugar will just result in a smoother cookie.
How To Make Forgotten Cookies
- In the large bowl of an electric mixer, using the whisk attachment, whip eggs until foamy. (see below for a more complete description of how to whip the egg whites)
- Once the eggs are foamy start adding the sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time. Let the mixer run for 10 seconds before each additional tablespoon of sugar.
- Once all of the sugar is incorporated, continue to whip the egg whites for 1 full minute, or until stiff peaks form. Then add the mini chips and fold them in gently with a rubber spatula. Also add the vanilla extract at this time.
- Using a cookie scoop, or just a spoon, scoop the batter onto a baking sheet. ( you can scoop the cookies fairly close together as they don't spread much at all while baking.
Stages of Whipping Egg Whites
- To start, your eggs will be liquid and runny.
- Using a stand mixer, beat the eggs until "foamy". This means that they are opaque, and will be a mass of tiny bubbles.
- As you start adding the sugar, the eggs will go from foamy to "soft peaks". This means that when you lift the beater out of the eggs, they will mostly hold their shape, but not fully.
- And as you keep whipping the eggs, they will eventually reach the "stiff peak" phase, which means that when you lift the beater, the eggs will stay in exactly the shape they came out of the bowl in.
A few notes about how to get the best results:
- The most important tip first: once you've placed the cookies into the preheated oven, DO NOT open the oven door for at LEAST 4 hours. Overnight is better. Give the cookies time to set. And it's so fun to wake up to cookies the next morning! Cookie breakfast!
- It can be tempting to try to use a fancy piping tip and make these cookies extra pretty - don't do this. The chocolate chips get stuck in the piping tip, and it all goes badly. Trust me, I've tried to make it work several times.
- For the most attractive cookies you can, use a cookie scoop. The cookies will hold that round shape while baking, and they're much more attractive than the lumpy forgotten cookies you usually see.
- If you can, try to make these cookies on a dry day. Humidity can be a killer for meringue, so if you don't have central heat or air conditioning, they could end up being sticky.
Variations:
- If I can find it, I like to use clear vanilla extract for this recipe, as regular vanilla extract can tinge the cookies with a slight tan color, and I love the snowy white color of these cookies. I sometimes just leave the vanilla out, and it's always been fine.
- A lot of recipes called for adding chopped pecans or walnuts. I don't like nuts in cookies, so I leave them out, but if you want to add ½ cup of chopped nuts.
- If you're making these for the holidays, you could use mint chocolate chips instead of regular chips, or crushed up candy cane for a holiday flair.
- You can also add a bit of food coloring to make these for different holidays.
Equipment:
A good stand mixer is the key to making these the easy way. If you don't have a stand mixer though, you can absolutely make this with an electric hand mixer. Just know that you're going to spend more time whipping the eggs. I would not recommend trying to make this recipe by hand unless you're really looking to get an arm workout in.
FAQ's
Store leftovers in an airtight container, with sheets of parchment paper between the layers of cookies. They will keep for about a week when stored in a cool dry place.
You can. Store them as described above, and then freeze for up to a month. Technically they'll keep for longer, but they will start to take on flavors of other foods in your freezer the longer they sit, so I would try to eat them sooner.
Short answer - no. Cream of tartar acts as a stabilizer for the thousands of little air bubbles in the egg whites. The flavor of the cookies wont be impacted if you don't add it, but they cookies might not hold their shape as well.
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Forgotten Cookies
Ingredients
- 2 egg whites room temperature
- pinch of salt
- ¾ cup of granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract
- ½ cup mini chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, with the whisk attachment, break two eggs making sure to get the only the whites in the bowl. If you get even a little bit of yolk they wont whip up properly. You can save the yolks for something else, or you can toss them. I usually toss them. Add the pinch of salt.
- Whisk the egg whites on medium high speed for 2-3 minutes until opaque and foamy.
- Start adding the sugar, a tablespoon at a time letting about 10 seconds go by after each addition.
- Once all the sugar is incorporated, continue to let the mixer run for one more full minute.
- Remove the bowl with the meringue from the stand mixer and mix in the vanilla and chocolate chips by hand.
- Spoon or scoop the meringue onto the lined baking sheet, put the sheet in the oven and turn the oven off.
- Leave the cookies in the oven for eight hours, or overnight (or - forget about them - get it??)