Don’t put granulated sugar in a food processor to achieve a finer grain. Hello and welcome to my blog, my name is Krish and I am a masters student at Coventry University. Once the pan is on a low heat then it can usually take anywhere between 10 and 20 minutes to dissolve the sugar. Now you know the cooking science behind meringue and the tips and tricks to troubleshoot any problems, try baking Anneka's ulitmate meringue recipes. Dissolving your sugar My Swiss meringue buttercream recipe uses roughly equal amounts of egg whites and granulated sugar. If you're trying to eliminate the sugar entirely or almost entirely then you need to replace it with something - generally, a savory bomb, like very old cheese (for example Reggiano and chives), or very dark chocolate if it must be a dessert. Turn the mixer onto high and let your eggs whip until you reach stiff STIFF peaks. As whisking continues, the proteins then link back together loosely and re-bond around air bubbles and moisture to create a foam. Bake the meringue as soon as possible after mixing. The main problem, of course, is that as you allude to, when you bake it you'll basically end up with dried-out egg. What's the specific problem with that? I add flavor such as vanilla once the peaks have formed. I can't remember the necessary term for this, but the sugar is not supposed to dissolve. Source: Alan Benson. Reduce the oven temperature slightly (sometimes only 10°C is enough to make a huge difference). Deliciously humble, the Lousie cake is a simple layering of shortbread biscuit, raspberry jam and coconut meringue that exist in pure harmony. The sugar in a meringue caramelise when cooked and make a sort of toffee. Whisking not only breaks down the original eggwhite structure but this action also eventually creates a new structure in the form of a foam. Student 2 This is caused by the whites not being cooked completely. My wife just complained that she can't eat my meringue because they have too much sugar in them. Do not expect it to be a stiff meringue at this point; it will still be soupy when we take it off the heat. There's also a huge variaton in results (separate from sugar content, though affected by it) depending on cooking method - hot and fast, low and slow, somewhere in the middle...they are all good in their own way, unless you manage to burn them (that's just not good...). Whisk the eggwhites on medium or medium-high speed when using an electric mixer for a foam with lots of tiny, even bubbles and a thick, smooth, easy to shape meringue. Yes, the process can be problematic for various reasons that can make the outcome seem pretty much disastrous. Here are recipes to use the leftover egg yolks.. 1½ Cups / 300g Sugar – White Granulated Sugar is used in this recipe … Humidity can have a negative impact on meringues, so try to make meringue on a dry day. Less fresh eggs will whisk to a foam more quickly than fresher ones, and you’ll achieve a slightly greater volume, but the resulting foam will be less stable than one made with fresh eggs. As you may know, beaten egg whites (without sugar) are not very stable; they tend to lose volume and if you try to make it in advance, you may end up with a soupy bowl of bubbles. Increase the sugar content or make an Italian or Swiss meringue that contains less moisture and a higher sugar concentration. Take the egg white sugar mix back to the mixer bowl , add a small amount of something acid like cream of tartar or lemon juice and start whipping. For example, when you add 8 spoons of salt into water the salt already starts to stay in the bottom of the cup. 2021 Stack Exchange, Inc. user contributions under cc by-sa. If you're just reducing the sugar then maybe this isn't a problem. In order for sugar in water to be a chemical change, something new would need to result. I'm still learning meringue but you sound quite experienced! There’s nothing you can do after the fact, but next time take the following into account to prevent weeping. To explain, when sugar is whisked with eggwhites it dissolves into the protein film around the air bubbles. Source: Alan Benson, Chewy layers of cashew meringue are sandwiched with a rum-spiked buttercream to create this traditional Filipino dessert.Â, Unashamedly rich and sweet, a thin slice is all you need. It also draws the water out of the whites, trapping it in the air bubbles. If you can’t get your hands on a superfine granulated sugar, you can place the sugar and the egg whites in a double boiler and SLOWLY warm it over hot (not boiling) water. When the sugar starts boiling, turn the heat down to medium and let it simmer for 10 minutes. There are so many "right ways" out there to add sugar to a meringue. You could always use brown sugar. @Ecnerwal - do you have a method I could follow? One thing to be careful of when you add sugar late in a meringue is giving the sugar crystals time to fully dissolve. When considering the temperature of the eggs, even though chilled eggs make a foam that’s more stable, I always use the freshest eggs possible at room temperature for a foam that’s stable enough but doesn’t take too long to form. It behaves a lot like sugar, but isn't sweet. 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