My Sweet Blog
My Tips
Tips for making soft meringue
There are many cakes or deserts which require soft meringue. In case of an especially strong sweet
craving, soft meringue can also be enjoyed separately as a dessert. For example, adding gingerbread on
soft blackcurrant meringue creates an exciting, Christmas-scented treat (see my photo).
Here are the tips how to make a good soft meringue. For exact amount of needed ingredients, please
find my blog post about making a soft meringue cake—check out "Valentine's Day Cake with Soft
Meringue".
1️. Add the hot syrup to the egg white foam in a thin stream while continuously mixing.
2️. Instead of water, prepare the syrup with a stronger, sour juice (e.g., blackcurrant or cherry juice) to
prevent the meringue from becoming too sweet. This also gives the meringue a nice color.
3️. The meringue will have a softer texture if you add slightly less sugar. Try using 60g of sugar per egg
white, but keep in mind that in this case, you will need to beat the mixture longer to allow the egg
whites to reach the "cooked" stage.
4️. The most convenient way to make meringue is with a stand mixer, as it allows you to add the syrup
while whipping the egg whites. However, it is also possible to do it with a hand mixer.
5️. The soft meringue is ready when a drop of it does not spread out on a plate. If you have a sugar
thermometer, let the syrup heat to 118°C.
6️. Before adding the syrup, the egg whites should already be foamy, with small air bubbles forming.
Start beating them about 10 seconds before pouring in the syrup.
7️. Boil the syrup over medium heat. If the heat is too high, too much water will evaporate, making the
syrup too thick and possibly causing it to caramelize.
8️. Do not stop beating the egg whites before adding the syrup. Then there is no risk in beating them
too much.
9️. Use the meringue on the cake immediately after making it, as standing can affect its texture.
Vanilla sauce
Vanilla sauce is often added on desserts and cakes. Most people make vanilla sause by simply buying the vanilla powder and mix it with milk at home. But that's not very healthy and not very tasty either. People often think that it's hard to make a homemade vanilla sauce. But actually it's not very complicated process. You can look at my "Vanillesoße (German Vanilla Sauce)" recipe in my blog to make one by yourself.
How Not to Waste Food –
Part I
Wasting food is a serious problem in our society. Usually we don't have time to go to the store every day and this means that we often buy groceries for the whole week in one go. However, it is quite difficult to plan in advance the exact amounts of food that we need each day. So it can happen that some of the food is left over at the end of the week, the expiry dates soon approaching and we don't know how to use those ingredients. In order to reduce food waste, a whole range of different apps have emerged, where you can enter the ingredients that you currently have at home. The apps then offer you different recipes with have only these ingredients. My favorite is the SuperCook.com website, which is very easy to use and offers very tasty recipes. Please use similar webpages or apps to also waste less food in the future!
How Not to Waste Food
– Part II
In many recipes you need to use either only egg whites or egg yolks. But what to do with these leftovers? Don't worry, you can easily find different recipes that use only those specific ingredients you are left with (see my post How Not to Waste Food – Part I ). If you have only egg yolks or egg whites left, then you can also find a solution from my blog. If you have only egg yolks, please see the recipe of Chocolate Tiramisu and if you have only egg whites, see the recipe of Angel Face Cake.
Did you know that.....?
All products actually contain a little more product than indicated on the package. The reason for this is that manufacturers do not want to risk the possibility that someone will discover that their product is less than allowed in the package and will file a complaint with the Consumer Protection against the company. To mitigate such a risk, manufacturers usually add a little more to the product. For a fun, I did a little test with Vilma's milk baking chocolate and Vilma's dark baking chocolate. According to the package, both were supposed to be 200 grams, but in reality there were 204 grams of milk chocolate and 202 grams of dark chocolate in the package!
A Recommendation for Choosing a Muffin Tin!
I've baked quite a few muffins over the years and I've had several muffin tins. Silicone molds are the best, because you can easily get whole muffins out of them, and you don't actually need to use paper muffin molds (let’s save the environment!). It is also important that the muffin form has a hard frame around it, because otherwise it will be difficult to put the muffins in the hot oven and take them out. This is especially important when you put to oven simultaneously 2 muffin tins. My favorite is the Jamie Oliver by Tefal muffin tin with a silicone hard frame. It is easy to use and clean. It also has a good size –2 muffin tins fit simultaneously in the oven and the tin is suitable for baking both small and large muffins.
Recommendation for Choosing a Food Processor
A food processor is an important assistant for every home cook. When choosing a food processor, it is important to look at its power (low-powered machines either work very slowly or cannot, for example, mix a large amount of dough). It would be wise to find out which additional parts can be purchased for each food processor. For example, can you add to the usual mixing bowl and blender different choppers and slicers, a meat grinder, a pasta machine, a potato peeler, a juicer, etc.? It is also good if the parts of the food processer are made of metal, not plastic, because metal lasts longer.
Our family uses Kenwood CHEF premier food processor. It has good power, metal parts that are easy to clean and you can add all sorts of parts to it. Unfortunately, this food processor is also quite expensive, but in our family it has worked almost every day for the last thirteen years. So it was a good purchase!
