board77

I would guess you underbeat the egg whites. They must do more than hold their shape, they must reach the stiff peak stage. I would also suggest you add a little cornstarch with the sugar, as you would in making a Pavlova. It is possible to overbeat egg whites, but I think you'd know before you got to that stage. 1/2 cup sugar seems like a lot for 6 egg whites, too. What size eggs?

Is your oven accurate? Do you know that it's at 200 degrees? It's worth buying an oven thermometer to make sure, nothing is more maddening than baking with an inaccurate oven.

The recipe said 1/2 cup sugar for 4 egg whites, plus confectioner's sugar (which I didn't use).

So how much sugar would you use for 6 egg whites?

Well, if the recipe calls for 1/2 cup for 4 egg whites, then you should use 1/2 as much again for 6: 2/4 + 1/4 = 3/4 cup.

That is almost certainly your problem. The sugar is not there only as sweetener, it is necessary to create a solid substance out of whipped egg whites. There's a chemical reaction there, and you need the right proportion of ingredients.

How much confectioner's sugar? Enough to make up for the missing 1/4 cup sugar? I've made meringues many times and have never used confectioner's sugar in them. But I have used "Berry Sugar", also known as "superfine". It beats in more easily. You can create your own by zipping ordinary sugar in a food processor. But it's not necessary.

Making desserts is not the time to cut down on sugar, usually.

I often make "Mile High Meringue" for a lemon pie, the recipe is from Cooks' Illustrated. It requires beating hot syrup into beaten egg whites for NINE minutes. Which is a long bloody time. It's an "Italian Meringue", since it uses hot syrup.

When I said before it seemed like a lot, I wasn't thinking. Upon giving it some thought, I do believe it's the issue.

Actually, the first time I posted about my meringue failures, you speculated that I might be using too much sugar. So, the next time, I left out the confectioner's sugar and they turned out fine, to my utter shock and delight. But the next time, they didn't, so I decided to reduce the sugar even further - that's why I reduced it this time.

Next time I guess I'll leave out the confectioner's sugar but otherwise follow the recipe. And I'll beat for nine minutes. Stay tuned...

If you are using 1/2 as much again egg whites, you can't expect the recipe to work. If it does, something else is wonky.

But - don't beat for 9 minutes! You only do that if you are making Italian meringue.

Can egg yolks be frozen to make a custard later?

Well, they can be frozen. If it changes their abilities, I don't know. The Ball Blue Book says they may be used as fresh eggs once thawed.

It says to take fresh eggs, wash, and then crack and separate (unless you want to freeze them as whole eggs). For yolks: Gently mix the yolks without forming air bubbles. To each 6 yolks add 1 tsp. sugar or 1/2 tsp. salt to reduce coagulation. Pack in can or freeze jars or plastic freezer boxes.

To use: 1 Tbsp. of egg yolk = 1 egg yolk

Wash eggs? I've never done that in my life

You can't freeze yolks. They morph and harden exactly as if you'd fried them. It's really weird. I heard that if you mixed the yolks with the egg whites, they wouldn't do that, so I tried it last year.

The yolks didn't harden quite the same way as they did before, but they don't mix into a batter when thawed the same way, either. So now I have a couple dozen beaten, frozen eggs in the freezer waiting for me to decide what to do with them.

I might as well give them to the dogs. I froze them thinking our chickens would have a few weeks of not laying in the winter, but it's been so mild they just kept on laying. I've got several dozen fresh eggs in the fridge right now that I'm going to have to sell or give away. I can only eat eggs now if they are cooked into something else at a low percentage of the total volume. So, no more egg dishes for main meals anymore. *sigh* That was such a good way to get rid of excess eggs: declare a "breakfast for supper!" day.

edit: I regularly wash eggs. The hens' feet get muddy when it's wet outside and the eggs do get pretty disgusting sometimes.

Not an issue with caged hens, I suspect.

But did you see that the recipe says you need to add either sugar or salt to the egg yolks prior to freezing? I suspect it keeps the yolks from getting weird like you said. I have done this with egg whites, and it's been fine.

I don't know. The Ball Blue Book is very reliable. YMMV, of course.

Actually, no I didn't see that. I was so full of my answer to Jude's question I just kind of skimmed over the intervening posts to the reply box.

Sugar in the yolks, eh? That's weird. I wonder what it does?

Oh. I do that, too.

I don't know what the sugar or the salt would do, but it must work somehow to keep the proteins behaving properly. (Keeps them from denaturing?) The tricky part is deciding beforehand what type of dishes you'll be using the eggs for--sweet or savory.

Anyone cooked with tonka beans? What do they taste like? How are they used?

Tonka beans? I've never heard of them. Tonka trucks, I know.

The cooking blogs rave about it. Apparently it has strong hints of vanilla and other spices. The trees it grows on are sometimes 1000 years old. Unfortunately it's been banned in the States because it has coumarin in it, and the FDA claims it has blood-thinning properties. But they don't add that it's a derivative of coumarin that has these properties, not coumarin itself. They also don't mention that cinnamon has the same amount of coumarin in it.

Anyway, the gourmet shop at the bottom of my street sells it, and I've been wanting to try it for a while. I'm supposed to bring dessert to a dinner this Sunday - I think I'll make a tonka bean flavoured dessert of some sort.

It sounds interesting. You'll have to let us know how it tastes.

I've got the tonka beans. How to describe the flavour - well, it's not cinnamon or vanilla, but I can discern some of the building blocks of what makes up the cinnamon flavour complex, if that makes any sense. And it has a vanilla-like aromatic quality without smelling like vanilla. I wish we could share smells and tastes over the internet like we can graphics and sound. It really is a wonderful aroma that deserves to be better known.
This is what they look like. And, though they look shrivelled like raisins, they really are quite firm and can be grated like nutmeg.

So I'm making Tonka Bean & Apple Crumble. It's like your regular apple crumble, except you sprinkle grated tonka over the apples, and also mix in grated tonka with the crumb mixture.

And here are the apples with bits of tonka sprinkled over: It's baking at this moment. Since I'm one of those cooks that samples the dough as I go, I can tell you in advance that it tastes fantastic
I'm just going to tell everyone that it's apple crumble tomorrow. It'll be interesting to see if anyone picks up on the mysterious other flavour. Even more interesting if anyone can identify it.

Cool! That's really interesting.

So, none of them were familiar with Tonka Bean - some guessed cinnamon, some guessed nutmeg, one person guessed some sort of pepper. It was a big hit, though.