Gather your mise en place; get together all of the equipment needed for the recipe and gather your ingredients.

Preheat the oven to 200°F.

Add egg whites, sugar, salt and cream of tartar and beat with whisk attachment on high speed 7 min or until you have glossy ribbons and the peaks stay fairly stiff.

Transfer meringue to a pastry bag fitted with a ³⁄₈″ round tip and pipe onto a lined cookie sheet (about 1 inch apart). Mushroom caps should look like large chocolate kisses (1 ½ inch diameter at the base) with the tip swirled into the side so you get an even top; you can smooth the mushroom caps with a wet fingertip. Mushroom stems should look like slimmer/​taller kisses (¾ inch diameter at the base) and tips pointed up.

Bake at 200˚F for 1 hour 30 min. They should slide easily off the parchment paper easily when they are done. Remove from the oven and pull parchment paper off the baking sheet. Let cool on paper completely to room temp.

To assemble, dust the tops and stems lightly with cocoa powder. If you like, you can smudge the cocoa powder with your fingers to give them that natural dirty look. Rotate the tip of a small paring knife in the centre of each mushroom cap to cut a small hole just large enough to fit the tip of the base. 

Now melt chocolate, transfer into a piping bag, snip off a tiny hole from the corner of the bag and pipe chocolate into the holes of meringue. Stick the bases into the holes and leave them upside-down until chocolate hardens and sets. Gently transfer set cookies to an airtight container and store for several days at room temp. Do not refrigerate!