Meringue
Posted by Skrud at Sunday, June 11th 2006 at 1:35pm
Last night there was an awesome potluck held at Harley’s. There were a lot people and even more food, tons of booze going around (we polished off a bottle each of Southern Comfort, Bailey’s, Jack Daniels, Jägermeister, Vodka, Gin, Drambuie, Kahlua, and little bits of other stuff, too).
My contribution to the potluck was supposed to be Baked Alaska, which I saw on the geekified cooking show/podcast Ctrl+Alt+Chicken. (I suggest downloading the episode if you want to see what it’s like – the show’s great).
Little did I realise just how ambitious this project was. Baked Alaska seems relatively simple … you take shortcake, cover it with vanilla ice cream, cover that with raspberry sherbet, and then cover the whole thing with meringue icing and shove it the oven. See, egg whites are a thermal insulator, so they prevent the ice cream from melting while it’s in the oven. It’s supposed to be pretty awesome.
Anyway… the shortcake ice-cream part was simple enough. We had something like six people trying to beat the egg whites though, and after two hours with no meringue we gave up and declared the experiment a failure.
Apparently, there are a number of factors that go into making a successful meringue, that none of us could’ve thought of. For example, the weather is a factor:
If it is humid or raining outside, sometimes you won’t get the proper volume no matter what you do.
It was raining all day, and humidity was at 100%.
When whipping egg whites, always start your mixer on medium-low to medium speed.
Oops.
Beating, stirring and jarring can break down the foam.
Well … what the hell? How do you beat egg whites if beating them breaks it down??
They didn’t mention any of these factors on Ctrl+Alt+Chicken … Mind you, they’re geeks – not chefs – but maybe they should get a supervisor or something to make sure little tips like that get out!
I always figured that cooking and baking was just like following an algorithm – you follow the instructions and stuff happens. But it’s NOT!
Now Harley has a half-made Baked Alaska in his freezer.
Still, great party!
