Lemony Meringues!!

So, since I was working Monday (egg day at the Spoon!!), I got to take home a pint of delicious eggwhites! One of the easiest, most versatile things you can make with these is meringue. It's one of the most basic French dessert techniques. Today, I decided to try making lemon meringues, chock-o-block full of lemon zest. I pretty much just built off the Jaques Pépin recipe:


1/2 (give or take) cup egg whites (4-ish whites)
1 cup sugar
zest of four lemons

1. Beat whites until they begin to hold their shape
2. Beat in 1/2 cup sugar, continuing to beat until shiny and stiff
3. Fold in the sugar and lemon zest, a bit at a time
4. Pipe or spoon onto parchment-lined baking sheets
5. Bake at 200°F for 2.5 hours

These came out quite well, I think. They're crisp and crunchy, and plenty sweet, with a definite citrus flavour. They retained the yellow colour imparted by the lemon zest, although they did caramelise a little bit. I'm very happy with these, although I think they could suffer a pinch of salt to balance the sugar, and maybe a drip or two of lemon juice to give them just a little more tartness. Experiments for next time!

<lazy>ME</lazy>

So, I've been really bad about keeping up with this blog. A bunch of stuff has happened since the Babas au Rhum. I started work at The Bent Spoon, which is awesome, and discovered a couple amazing cookbooks that are now on my wishlist, but the most important, of course, was my trip up to Rhode Island to see my boyfriend Matchstick for our one month! That was lots of fun, and very tiring...and we got to have a few culinary adventures :) He bought me Martha Stewart's cookie cookbook, which is absolutely amazing, so we took it for a spin, and made her Thin and Crisp Chocolate Chip Cookies, which turned out marvellously. They were a hit with his family, too. The recipe in the book calls for unsalted butter, but I found that you can use salted butter if you reduce the amount of salt you add later by half. We also attempted to make a banana cake...but forgot half the leavening, so it didn't cook in the centre. That didn't really phase anyone, though--we just cut off the good bits and ate them. I also made an American buttercream with mashed bananas in place of all but a few tablespoons of milk, which was quite good, although the sugar tended to overwhelm the banana.

For Fathers' Day I made an Italian almond cake. The recipe is rather interesting. It's essentially a sponge cake made with ground almonds in place of flour. The recipe is flourless, and so my mother likes to make it on Passover. I was lucky enough to get some egg whites from Gab (at work we almost always use the yolks only), and so my cake was made with some very spiffy organic, free-range eggs from Runnin' Free Farm! With any luck I'm going to have opportunity to make this cake again with the same lovely eggs.

Matchstick is coming down this Thursday for a week, and there are definitely going to be some culinary capers happening! Well, if we aren't too tired out from sight seeing (yes, that is possible in NJ). But on the docket is definitely Aloo Gobi, which is part of the menu for the party I'm throwing on Friday, and also cheese cake with lemon curd! So stay tuned!!