I wanted to bring a tasty dessert to a dear friends’ Bunko party over the weekend. Bunko is a no-skill dice game which started in England and was imported to San Francisco in the 1800’s. It’s now played regularly by 27 million women across the U.S. at parties just like ours on Saturday night.

We ate a delicious dinner of baked salmon and salad prepared by our hostess (thanks Lori!), and a couple of us brought along something sweet.

I’d been thinking about the delicious meringue dessert I had at the Boathouse Restaurant in Sydney in January, and found a great recipe at Epicurious.com. I wanted these meringues to be a little larger than the store-bought versions, and more free-form in shape.

This recipe used eight egg whites, super-fine granulated sugar, cream of tartar, salt, and vanilla and I formed the individual meringues by sliding the mixture sideways from my largest tablespoon.

Once they were cooked and had cooled inside the oven, I put them beside squares of Salted Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake (recipe here), creating a dessert platter dotted with fresh strawberries.

Recipe – Meringues (source: Epicurious)