A solid day of learning about meringues!! TG when we went to scale the multitude of egg white portions this morning, we found a lot in the fridge left over from yesterday – courtesy of the poor yokels that had to scale egg yolks for the pate a choux yesterday…. We got away in the end with only having to crack/separate about three dozen.
Then we whipped through the rest of the day, literally, working our way through 4 different meringue types and cooked it through the Italian meringue (made with a boiling sugar syrup). The secret to avoiding sugar droplets on the side of the mixing bowl in Italian meringue was revealed, good news for my opera cake consumers! We made madelines, chocolate madelines (in the fridge for baking tomorrow), and financiers. Lots more piping practice, then progressed to practicing spreading thin layers with offset spatulas (vital for spreading thin sponge layers for entremets and layered cakes). Dishes, dishes and more dishes punctuated the fun. We ended with a couple of introductory ganaches, the start of the 14 different flavours we’re making for macaroons tomorrow. Interesting that their ganache technique employs a hand mixer which has been explicitly frowned upon by all my chocolate teachers to date (except to amalgamate butter in elastic ganache); I suspect it’s much faster than the hand mix emulsification method and production time and labour factors largely in our discussions. It will be interesting to experience the mouthfeel tomorrow, in comparison; they are using many of the same single origin chocolates that I use and a few new ones which will be nice to try.
At the end of the afternoon an interesting discussion of the whys and wherefores of meringue baking, and on the pros and cons, and uses of each type of meringue. As we efficiently cleaned up we also got an entertaining lesson to finish on hiring staff, and retaining them from the former Aria pastry chef (Belgian Michel).
35C outside today, still hot outside right now @ 7 p.m.
Helen Laity
14/10/2022 at 9:05 AMI had to Google financiers.
Karen H
15/10/2022 at 11:08 AMFinnaciers are fabulous and buttery fresh out of the oven when eaten warm, but quickly become “meh” in my opinion. I’ve made raspberry financiers in the past, but it’s hard to get the ratio right when adding wet ingredients like rasps even though I used fresh ones. Knowing how to mimic fresh financiers to get that buttery just baked taste is a valuable trick.