Besitos de naranja

Hello, everyone.

It's spring Bake Sale time again (also known as Fish Fry Season) and so I was fooling around with ideas for the bake sale.

I thought about Miracle Whip cake--but it is somewhat difficult to manage when it's a carry-in item. (Gooey cake, as it's always pretty moist for me, and the favored topping is whipped cream. Which also is kind of iffy for transport in my car.)

I thought about oatmeal cookies--but I did that last week, and wanted to do something different.

In this mood, I was walking through my local WalMart and saw the Easter baking display. Eureka! Various colors of "velvet cake" mixes! (Sorry, the mix with a pink layer and a yellow layer isn't online.) I bought the box with both pink and yellow inside--two packets--and made a marble velvet cake with it. It needed something, though. I knew there would be cream cheese frosting on top--almost can't lose with that--but I though we'd need more "stuff" for the table.

My eye fell on a container of 6 egg whites in the fridge. Aha. Kisses! But I didn't want to repeat the experiment of using the spring colored chocolate chips. Too many people thought the yellow ones looked like corn. So I ground up some pecans. And pulled the bag of unsweetened coconut out of the pantry.

In the end it looked like this:

Spring marble velvet cake and Besitas de naranja

Besitas with the flavoring: Licor de Naranja

I used: 8 egg whites, about 7/8 cup of white sugar, about a quarter teaspoon--scant--of cream of tartar to help the meringue, 2 1/2 tablespoons of the orange liqueur, half a cup of finely chopped pecans, probably 2/3 cup of unsweetened coconut. Whipped the egg whites and cream of tartar until foamy with the whisk blade in my Kitchenaid, added the sugar in portions, except the last 1/4 cup, put in 2 1/2 tablespoons of the orange liquor, added the last bit of sugar slowly while whipping, and when the eggs were mostly-stiff and still a bit glossy, folded in the nuts and coconut.
Dropped by big spoonfuls onto silicone-covered baking sheets and baked at about 300F for 35 minutes or so. Turned off the oven for a few minutes while frosting the cooled cake. Then took out the cookies to cool.

These were actually surprisingly chewy in the end, with a good, light flavor. We sold them as garnishes to the cake pieces and the ones that were extra and didn't go to the bake sale were a hit with DH.