On Meringues

I almost ended up not making these yesterday, and it’s a good thing I hadn’t gotten very far – if the power had gone out when I was mixing, the entire batch would have had to be tossed. As it stands though, I decided to document a bit of the baking process as I’ve had a lot of questions over the years on how to make them. (And it’s not that it’s overly tricky, but it doesn’t take much to screw it up. Given the amount of time it takes to make them, that can be a bit heartbreaking. LOL.)  Last time I made these I was in Canada and they turned out like ass – though I think part of that was because I had a hand beater and a shallow bowl, which really doesn’t work. You need a fast mixer. (It could also have been that the elevation screwed things up, but I don’t know.)

Anyway if you follow the directions from the previous blog post –> https://mynfel.blogspot.com/2009/11/oh-my-its-fruitcake-weather-buddy.html, this is more or less what it should look like as you go.

Egg separating: If you use an egg separator, I highly suggest doing each egg separate and then pour it all into a bowl. It’s pretty crappy to get nearly all the eggs done only to have one of the last ones crack incorrectly and you’ve lost the whole batch.

And here’s what a bowl of egg whites looks like. (I made a double batch, so this is 12 eggs). You need to leave these out for at least an hour. Mine were out for 45 minutes and then the power went out for 3 hours after that. I just put them in the microwave to sit and they seemed to turn out just fine.

Now, when you put the batter on the cookie sheets, this is pretty much make or break time. If you’ve done everything right, the cookies will just sorta hold their shapes like little lumps. If not, they’ll essentially melt into puddles of flat goo. Tasty goo, for all that, but not really conducive for baking.  I baked each tray for 45 minutes at 250 F. This took about six hours for a double batch and a small oven. (And since this whole thing takes about 8 hours to do, you can see why I only do these about once a year).

On the other hand, you can see how much it makes. That is a cake holder there and it’s overflowing. My initial intent was to make some to give away at work, but seeing as we’re probably snowed in for a bit, guess I’ll just have to suffer and eat them all myself

*cough*

Alas.

And randomly, just to show you the last of the snow, here’s a shot of my Murano last night.

And here’s mr myn, for comparison. Keep in mind he’s about 6 feet, 2 inches.

Yes, I know the great white north gets more, but DC shuts down on the *threat* of snow half the time. Two inches can shut down schools for days.

Mr myn’s mom is coming home from this hospital today so he’ll be leaving me with the truck and he’ll take his off-roading Jeep, so at least I won’t worry about having to dig myself out. Not that I’m lazy, just that after the back surgery, shoveling snow is very low on my list of approved activities.