Week 4, Part 1 – Bonus Bake!

Leftover Meringue Nests

Easter is almost upon us, so I wanted to celebrate the fact that for secular folk, we basically have a long weekend dedicated to eating chocolate.  My baking for this week will thus be Easter-inspired.  As a result I intend to bake on Easter Sunday itself, but I feel it’s a long time for y’all to wait, so I wanted to write an almost bonus blog, which is great, as when I made last week’s Boston Cream Cake, I had a bonus bake!

As you may remember from last week’s entry, to make the custard filling I had to use 3 egg yolks.  As a result I had 3 egg whites leftover.  So I thought I would try making meringue!  I knew this would be a good challenge, as making and baking meringues always look scary when I’ve seen them on tv.  Alas, this is not the case!  I googled ‘meringues 3 egg whites’, and used a combination of google results and my mother to see what to do.

Firstly I whisked the egg whites until they were stiff, and even did the holding the bowl upside down over my head trick.  Next I added caster sugar – according to Delia Smith you need 50g for each egg white, so 150g was required.  Unfortunately the Boston Cream Cake cleaned me out of caster sugar, so I only had just over 100g left, but I thought it’d be ok as the eggs were quite small. I added the sugar gradually (ish) as well as a pinch of salt.  I whisked and whisked, trying to get the soft peaks to form, however it had become quite runny (I think I may have over-whisked).  I was short on time though, so had to put up with it.  I spooned 9 blobs of meringue onto a lined baking tray, then followed Delia’s advice of putting it into an oven that had been pre-heated to 150c then turned down to 140c immediately after the tray went in.  I set the timer for 1.5 hours, so that the oven would turn off after that time, and the meringues would stay in the oven until it was stone-cold.  I returned 3 hours later to find perfect looking meringues!  I was so proud.  I then coated the flat side in leftover, re-melted ganache, whisked the leftover double cream, and made a meringue sandwich, just like the ones I love from Marks & Spencer.  However, dare I say it, these tasted better than M&S’s!  Crunchy on the outside, but marshmallow-y in the middle.  What a great use of leftovers.

 

Tune in Sunday for this week's other bake!