I am the egg (wo)man! *koo koo ka choo*
I was super excited about this experiment for three reasons. #1. I made french and italian meringue cookies
#2. I learned how to make homemade Hollandaise sauce
#3. I made my first poached egg
This whole project was SO time consuming, but so worth it!! Here we go. And don't you worry, I didn't forget my camera this time.
MERINGUE
"There are two general forms of meringues: those in which the sugar is directly added as the egg whites are whisked (French style), and those in which the sugar is dissolved before the egg whites are whisked (Italian style). The French version tends to be drier because the sugar is hygroscopic- sucking moisture out of the whites (thus increasing viscosity)-- and also grittier. The Italian version has a smoother, almost creamy texture.
French Meringue
In a clean bowl, whisk 3 egg whites to soft peak stage.
Add 150 g (3/4 cup) sugar (preferably superfine), one tablespoon at a time while continuously whisking. If you are using regular sugar, you'll need to whisk longer to make sure the sugar is completely dissolved. To check, roll a bit of the meringue between two fingers (it shouldn't feel gritty.)
Italian Meringue
Create a simply syrup by heating in the saucepan 100 g (1/2 cup) sugar and 60 g (1/4 cup water to 240 F. Set aside to cool.
In a clean bowl, whisk 3 egg whites to soft peak stage. Slowly pour in the sugar syrup while whisking continuously.
Making the cookies...
Using a spoon or piping bag, portion the meringue onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake in an oven preheated to 200 F for a few hours, until they freely come off the parchment paper.
Variation 1: French meringue (leave white)
Variation 2: French + 1 tsp lemon juice at the foamy stage (blue)
Variation 3: French + 0.75 tsp cream of tartar *(green)
Variation 4: Italian meringue (pink)
Evaluation
Baked meringues are evaluated on the basis of their volume after baking, their tendency to shrink, texture, surface appearance, and stability."
FRENCH MERINGUE
These regular, traditional french meringue cookies turned out to be the best of the bunch. When they baked their size wasn't changed much. If anything, they may have shrunken the slightest bit. They were airy and and crunchy. They were a bit brittle when you bit into them, but soft on the teeth. They broke apart in your mouth and melted almost immediately into a sugary bliss.
Here they are before they went into the oven. We were making jokes about all the different names we could give them. Our favorite was
"Casper's Droppings"
Once they were finished cooking, they were crispy and they came right off the wax paper with hardly any fuss. They had a toasted marshmallow tone to them and were golden brown on the bottom. They pretty much stayed a consistent size while baking.
I quickly learned that this is what it should look like afterwards, not like some of the other trials turned out!
Even after a few days these ones still had their crunch and airiness, whereas the other ones had a sticky texture similar to cotton candy. These quickly melted in your mouth and were fun to eat. They didn't give too many crumbs and they were simple.
FRENCH MERINGUE WITH LEMON JUICE
Additional ingredients such as lemon juice and cream of tartar are used in the same way that mousse is used for curly hair. If one adds mousse to curly hair, the curls will stay bouncy and tight without weighing the hair down. If one adds these acidic ingredients to egg whites, the stability of the meringue itself should improve in the same way.
The beginning of it all. Adding the coloring was so much fun because I didn't just stick with one drop of boring old blue. Oh no, I made a sea green turquoise blue with a little bit of yellow. I felt like a little kid when I saw the colors swirling and I gasped in amazement, my eyes stretching an inch wider and a smile spreading its way across my face.
After adding the lemon juice these were, in fact, holding their shape better with firmer tips. However, for some reason the meringue felt heavier than the traditional one as I swirled them onto the baking sheet with a makeshift piping bag (a ziplock with a corner cut off, twisted at the top). I had a little extra in the bag that wouldn't fit in the pan, so I thought "Why not?! Let's go crazy!". And, as you can see, I went crazy. I made a giant sea anemone shape in the center, and baby ones on the sides. I also did little droplets of meringue to test how the size of the cookie plays into the baking heat and time (there wasn't much change, except that the smaller ones cooked through more). The pan looked absolutely magical by the time I was done. My roommate John came into the room and said it looked like it was straight out of Willy Wonka's candy room...
...well, John came back a couple hours later and started cracking up when he saw the final result. "Willy Wonka's revenge?" he said, as he saw me struggling to break the cookies loose from the wax paper. HahaveryfunnyJohn.
For some reason, even though I followed the recipe exactly, these ones obviously didn't turn out as good as the first. They melted down, leaking a sugary goop that reminded me of the sour candy that they sell in the tubes called "Goo" that my sister ate once. Her tongue turned bright green afterwards...
Anyways, it did look pretty with the goop, but...
...here's what happened when I tried to scavenge the last hopes of these cookies from the pan. Oh dear god. I poked and scraped and scrubbed and picked and pulled and finally decided I would just soak it. Even though the cookies were on wax paper, they melted straight through! I learned my lesson on that one: ALWAYS put two sheets of wax paper underneath, just in case. Thankfully, after a full day of soaking I was able to scrub off the remains.
I did manage to save a few of the cookies, though. I kept trying them and kept trying to convince myself that they were good because they looked so pretty, but really they were sticky. They kept getting stuck in my teeth. Imagine if you turned cotton candy into taffy. Yep, that bad. After keeping them decoratively out on the table (like a vase of flowers) for a day, I chucked them.
On the bright side, I think the lemon did its job. As you can see in the picture above, the ones I saved held their own. They were tall and firm with solid tips. Despite their goop, their actual shape didn't melt down as much as the white ones did in the oven. I thought it was strange that they expanded though. I'm still struggling to figure that one out.
FRENCH MERINGUE WITH CREAM OF TARTAR
Fun with colors again. I did green. But no, not just any green...yellow-lime green. Adding the food coloring reminded me of all the times I babysat my cousin Jake and he would want to play "potion-making" in the kitchen. This consisted of taking a giant bowl, mixing together agave syrup, water, baking soda, food coloring, olive oil, a drop of vinegar, and an assortment of spices, some spoonfuls of flour and sugar (and anything else he could get his hands on) to see what he could create. A little chef in the making, don't you think? However, I think he still needs a little more practice before it actually becomes edible.
I took this picture specifically to show the thickness in the consistency of the final mixing stage. The bottom was able to stack onto itself and hold its shape while still inside the bowl. I do think the cream of tartar helped with the stability, but not as much as the lemon juice. As you can see in the picture below, when I tried to stack them they weren't standing as tall as the lemon juice trial, but they were still holding their own pretty nicely if I do say so myself.
When placing these on the pan, I tried to make them a little smaller than the meringue in the lemon juice trial. I wasn't sure if it was the lemon juice that made them come out the way they did, or the size of them. As it turns out, it may have been the size. These ones held their shape, didn't melt, and came off the wax paper easily. However, they didn't have the same crunch and the same dry airiness as the original version. By the end of the week, I am happy to say, they had all disappeared into the stomachs of my housemates. Success!
ITALIAN MERINGUE
Playing with colors again. I settled on a pretty peachy pink.
I had a big, big problem with these italian meringues. I followed the recipe exactly, melting the sugar into a syrup before adding it to the egg whites little by little. The problem is that there wasn't enough of the syrup to create a consistency that would hold. Even after vigorously beating and adding all of the syrup at a slow pace, the meringue was still soupy. There was no way I could have even tried to put it on the baking sheet. It would have been a meringue soup in a pan. I had to add 10 tbsp sugar to get it to the right consistency. Thinking back, I probably should have made a larger batch of the sugar syrup to add in rather than doing it the french way. If I were to do this again, I would do it that way. I guess these were more of a fusion italian-french meringue.
From the look and feel of the first trial and this trial, I came to the conclusion that adding lemon juice and cream of tartar was not necessary. If whipped enough, the meringue will still tip nicely on its own, as well as stay stiff and crisp enough to keep its shape. As for texture, disregarding the sticky mess of the lemon juice meringues, these cookies and the cream of tartar cookies turned out to be very similar. The cream of tartar cookies had a slightly bitter aftertaste, but nothing too noticeable. The consistency was the same-- partially chewy in the bite, and crisp in the center, melt in your mouth.
Oodles and oodles of little pink cookies.
My magical sea anemone.
**Little mermaid theme song playing the background**
*Australian accent*
Here we see the baby sea anemones up close in their natural habitat. If we stay very still and quiet we may get the chance to pet it! I'm just gonna creep in hea..
Trial #1: Crispy Goodness, and Trial #2: The Survivors
Where the magic happens. Exclusive behind-the-scenes photos.
Trial #3 and Trial #4
Delicate, sweet, and airy
Can you say STICKY?
After a few days, all of the cookies had reached the cotton candy taffy sticky consistency. They were still fun to munch on, they still tasted good, but they were not crispy and crumbly. I learned that when meringue, which is mainly composed of sugar, is exposed to moisture in the air it will wilt and become sticky. Sugar is hygroscopic (basically meaning that it loves to soak in water). The last two batches may have become sticky for one of two reasons. #1: Sitting out in the open in a moist kitchen with steam coming out from the tea kettle all the time, heat condensing in droplets on the window on a cold winter day, stove tops warming up the air, etc. OR #2: I may have been physically tired of whisking by this point in the project and not careful enough with the consistency of the meringue. The more one whisks, the finer the sugar crystals, and the less moisture it can absorb. The first trial was whisked very fine and smoothly, which could explain its appealing crispiness.
No comments:
Post a Comment