Chocolate Meringues

I seriously considered using duct tape to keep the oven door from being opened during the baking of the meringues. You are not to open the oven door and it was difficult to tolerate the overwhelming chocolate aroma coming from the oven after one hour and continuing for the remaining 2 hours of cooking time. It would have been difficult to decide whether to cook them for 2 ½ or 3 hours (without opening the oven door) if I didn’t live in Florida. Cooks Illustrated says that when you smell the chocolate, you are loosing the flavor. These were not the sweet meringues of my youth, but still tasted very chocolately. The chocolate chips were a nice addition, but are dangerously hot if you do not let them cool enough. I did not add the ground nuts, but I think it would be an improvement. They did seem a little over cooked, so next time I would try 2 ½ hours of cooking. Allow enough time to separate the eggs, wait for them to warm to room temperature, beat, cook for hours and sit in the oven before they can be removed. Mine fell off the spoon in very uneven sized lumps, a pastry bag would have probably made nice even meringues.