Orange Filled Meringues

Oh what a busy, fun, fun day it has been. All of the Julia children were able to be together to celebrate a couple of their birthdays. A kickball party, a surprise party and a sleepover were in the mix today along with the regular baseball practices, soccer games and Science Olympiad practice too.

About 6:30pm, I dropped off my oldest son at Angie’s home for her son’s birthday sleepover. My son was so excited to celebrate his friend’s birthday but I wasn’t so sure that he’d want to wake up at his buddy’s home on his birthday which is tomorrow (today actually). What was I thinking, he loved that idea! That speaks volumes to how he feels about his friendship and their family. So it was a win-win for everyone. Angie had planned a special breakfast for my son to make him feel special and I had a little something from us to open in the morning. And you know that I planned on picking him up earlier than normal in the morning as I just didn’t want to be away from him for too long on his birthday.

So back to the drop off, really, I only intended to do a quick drop off and back home to bake, bake and bake. I still had his birthday cake to make too. But there is something about Angie’s home and before you know it, you are engaged in conversation, cocktails and laughter. As I really was leaving this time to go home and bake, Angie suggested that it would be fun to bake together so that’s what we did! We shared ingredients and we split up the tasks of preparing the cookie. I already had my almonds blanched from earlier in the day (I ran home to get them). I worked at the food processor while Angie mixed the wet ingredients. When it was time to mesh the two sets of ingredients together I just dumped it into her bowl while she was mixing. We put it into a pastry bag to pipe and it just drizzled out of the bag without any control. We end up with just a plain mess. Apparently, I still don’t follow directions well because the recipe clearly states that the dry ingredients should be folded into the wet ingredients and not mixed. Folded is a key step. I was really quite content with our mess and thought that we made a good attempt and that this one just didn’t work out. There’s nothing to say we had to get it perfect, we just had to try. Well, Angie was still going strong and convinced me that we need a do-over. So that’s what we did but this time we skipped the almond blanching step (you’d never know) and proceeded to correct the step where we went wrong. Folding the ingredients together made all the difference in the world. The batter was a nice thick texture that was very easy to pipe keeping its form. I redeemed myself! Thinking back, we didn’t wait an hour for them to settle as the recipes suggests¸ we just stuck them in the oven and baked.

The filling was a cinch to create. The cookies turned golden brown and looked great. We were just waiting for the cookies to cool so we could fill/sandwich together.

That was about 11:20pm and my son was almost in tears because he suddenly wasn’t feeling well. Oh, no! We rushed to gather his belonging, said our quick good-byes, thank-yous, apologizes and got him home in bed. It’s one of those times where you feel terrible for every aspect of the situation. As sad as it makes me, I really am a firm believer that things happen for a reason. This reason must be that he was meant to wake up in his own bed on his birthday!

I didn’t get a chance to taste the cookies, but Angie finished assembling them and snapped the pics. Baking together tonight really gave me a sense of what Sharon & Theresa have fondly experienced together over the years. I think all of the Julia’s need to bake together someday because that would be entertaining! Phoebe