Suspiros

This is the type of recipe I love best. My mom has been making these (cookies? meringues? some weird hybrid of both?) for as long as I could remember. She got them from my great-grandmother Mary, who we used to visit at her retirement home in Santa Fe. I have nothing but the most magical memories of our trips to Santa Fe, and these magical little confections are a fitting reminder of those visits. The name is Spanish for "breath," and it's an apt moniker. One bite and the cookies dissolve into air.

My mom used to spoon these into baking cups to bake in the oven (which led to a lot of funny scenes of my sister and I as children with meringue crumbs all over our faces trying to lick out the last little morsels from the paper cups). I've decided to cut out the middle man and just bake them straight on the cookie sheet, but as I mention below, you really need to be careful to grease the sheet well or else the meringues will stick. And the flavors themselves? Delicately sweet, fantastically nutty from the flavors of the vanilla and pecans. And watching Peter's face as he picked up a cookie, realized how impossibly light it was, took a bite and feel it dissolve into nothingness, was nothing short of magic.

Suspiros

4 room temperature egg whites
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1 pinch salt

Preheat the oven to 315 degrees F. Line a cookie sheet with well-greased parchment paper. Beat the egg whites to firm, stiff peaks. While still beating (on low), gradually add the sugar to the whites until the mixture becomes thick and creamy. Stir in the vanilla, pecans and a pinch of salt.

Spoon the meringue mixture by the teaspoon onto the cookie sheet. Bake in the preheated oven for 25 minutes, remove and as quick as you can (if you haven't properly greased the parchment) using a thin metal spatula move the suspiros onto a cooling rack or plate to cool. If the parchment isn't properly greased, the meringue mixture may stick to the sheet and will become harder and harder to remove as it cools.

Enjoy, and arm yourself with a flyswatter to keep away your roommates.