The Things You Can Make With Egg Whites

I am ready to go to bed now, but at the North Beach Citizens award dinner, Mary asked when I was going to update my blog, so here it is... speaking of North Beach Citizens is an amazing organization that assists the homeless obtain permanent housing. Learn more about North Beach Citizens here.

Egg whites are amazing things. Mix them up with twice their weight in sugar, and you have yourself a meringue. There are three types of meringue; French (aka Cold or Common meringue), Swiss, and Italian. French meringue is called a cold meringue because it is prepared cold and then baked, as in meringue cookies. The Swiss meringue method is prepared by whisking the whites and sugar over a bain marie (water bath) until the temperature of the meringue is 140 degrees. Swiss meringues are used to make buttercream (frosting), as are Italian meringues. The Italian preparation requires the addition of sugar syrup to already whipped whites. It is the most stable of the meringue preparations.

In class, we learned how to make daquoise and japonais - flat discs made from a nut meringue, vacherins (meringue nests filled with fool or creme chantilly), meringue cookies, buttercream and French macarons. French macarons are beautiful cookies. They're the lovely sandwich cookies that Miette or any of the boulengeries sell for $1.50. At home, I attempted to make pistachio macarons, but I did not cook them long enough and they fell flat. In class, however, I made almond macarons with grand marnier buttercream. They were amazing. My next attempt with these will be chocolate macarons with the grand marnier buttercream. YUM. Macarons are done when the have a slight crust at the bottom and are shiny and smooth on top.

(taken with my iPhone!!)

Vacherins with Raspberry Fool (fruit puree with whipped cream)
3 8" Dacquoise discs with Meringue decorations and Grand Marnier Buttercream


Meringue Cookies, 12 all same size

For me, Meringue Week was the culmination of the last several weeks of class. Our bonus item, a lemon meringue tart, is comprised of 1) short dough - learned in week 3, 2) lemon curd - a custard, learned in week 4 and 3) meringue - learned this week. Now we're getting somewhere! I love that each skill and each recipes utilizes technique from previous weeks! We're building our skills and recipes. It's also nice to be able to use the egg whites that I saved from all the custard practice!