As with many sugarfree recipes there are some important notes....
The first note is the sprinkles. If you want your meringue cookies to be sugarfree, you have to use sugarfree sprinkles. Granted, there are so few sprinkles on each cookie, if you aren't cutting sugar because you have to, but simply because you want to cut down a little in your everyday foods, then you could certainly use regular sprinkles. But if you can't do sugar at all; then you must use sugarfree.
Another note: if it's a humid or wet day where you live and are making these, the egg whites are a bit cranky and might not want to whip up quite as well as they do on dry, hot, sunny days. You can add cream of tartar to help, and use room-temperature eggs to help overcome this. If all else fails and you have some meringue powder in the cupboard, add a tablespoon of that to your egg whites. They will whip right up after that.
There are a couple more important little notes but I'll talk about those below in the recipe.
You can add vanilla or almond flavor (the two most used) if you wish. But because egg whites can be a little temperamental, you can help them whip up to a nice stiff batter by adding a little cream of tartar, and it helps to whip them at room temperature - not straight from the refrigerator. You can leave them out on the kitchen counter overnight if you want to make these in the morning.
little dash of salt - optional
Spoon the mixture into a piping bag with any large star tip or if you don't have one, you can just put into a bag or baggy and cut the end off to pipe little circle mounds. Pipe little stars or mounds until the batter is used up. Sprinkle the tops if you wish. (You can also add a bit of food color to the batter if you want them colored or striped or even tie-dye.)
Bake at a very low temperature (from 170 - 220 degrees but no higher) for about 40-50 minutes depending on how large your little mounds/stars are. You can 'test' them by gently lifting a couple off the parchment. They might be a tad bit moist in the center yet but basically will lift off the parchment easily. If they are sticky or don't lift at all, give them another 5-6 minutes and check again.
When they basically lift off for you, just turn the oven off and prop open the oven door to vent, and just let the meringue cookies cool in the oven. After about an hour you can remove them from the parchment and place them on a rack to cool completely. They can be stored in an airtight container on the counter after that.
*Amount of sweetener is up to you. You can taste test and add more if you wish. A cup of sweetener to 4 egg whites is great, but use less if you don't like your meringues very sweet. Also - the kind of sweetener makes a difference in not only taste but how they whip up. Using allulose doesn't work as well as powdered erythritol.
If you skipped the notes above - my finished meringues turned a bit 'yellow' because I didn't care if they were white after baking (they were just for us to munch on) so I didn't bother using up my good "clear" vanilla extract on them... Ha ha.
I also added a touch of 'cake batter' flavoring which is yellow and makes the finished product a bit yellowish because of it.
