When I was pregnant we attended an ante-natal course run by the NCT.  We thought it would be a useful way to find out about our imminent arrival and a great opportunity to meet some people in the same (slightly scary) position as ourselves.  We’ve all now had our babies, six boys and two girls between us, and the mums and babies meet up once a week to have a gossip, generally accompanied by tea and cake!

This week it was my turn to host so I decided some baking was in order.  I haven’t been doing as much baking recently as I would like to, baby B has seen to that but my wonderful mother-in-law came round ‘for ten minutes’ to give baby B a cuddle and ended up staying all evening!  This gave me a chance to run around the house like a whirlwind doing all the washing, cleaning and sorting out that needed doing before I set my mind to some baking.  Coffee and Walnut cupcakes and these Chocolate Fudge Meringue Cookies were the order of the day.  They’re another recipe, along with my Rocky Road Cupcakes, which don’t look as good as they taste, but I promise they are rather fab!

You will need:

4 medium egg whites,

350g icing sugar,

75g cocoa powder,

50g plain flour

100g fudge chunks (I get mine from the supermarket)

Preheat the oven to 180°C and grease several baking trays and line with baking parchment.

Place the egg whites in a very clean large bowl and whisk until firm.  Add the icing sugar (it seems like you’re adding loads but go with it!), flour and cocoa powder and whisk in.  Add the fudge chunks and mix again.  Place tablespoons of the mixture on the baking sheets leaving space between each cookie as they will spread during cooking.  Bake in the oven for 12-15 minutes.  The tops will crack but the insides will become chewy.

Leave to cool for a minute then transfer onto a wire rack to cool  Keep in an airtight tin… if they last that long!