Skip to main content

Separate two eggs and add chocolate...

I can't separate you!
I don't usually make meringues.  Once, a long time ago, I made meringues, and I think I tried to wedge far too many of them into the oven at once.  They came out extremely chewy.  Usually I tell this story to people and they say, "oh, but chewy meringues can be quite nice..."  No.  This was the kind of chewy where you bit into it and it immediately glued itself to all your teeth at once, and the roof of your mouth, and your tongue, and you spent the next half hour trying to pick bits out with your fingernails.

So, I don't usually make meringues.  But recently I had a hankering for American-style pudding.  This, for the non-Americans in the audience, is a kind of thick flavoured custard, and is the only thing an American will think of if you say the word pudding - it doesn't refer to any other kind of dessert, and particularly not the British style of baked or steamed pudding.  This is useful to remember if you are ever trying to describe, say, Christmas pudding to someone across the Atlantic.  It's a bit like Americans describing biscuits to a British person.  The mental imagery is all wrong.

Anyway, the pudding that takes me back to my childhood is butterscotch pudding with raisins in, set in individual bowls with the skin on top.  (I seem to remember you could eat half of it and then, carefully, sliiide the remaining half out, leaving a perfectly clean bowl.)  There are, however, numerous other versions, and I thought I'd try chocolate this time.  This recipe is adapted from one in the Hershey's 100th Anniversary Cookbook.


Chocolate Pudding

 1.5 oz / 50g dark chocolate, broken into pieces
1 3/4 cup / 400 ml milk
2 egg yolks
5 oz / 135g sugar
2 tbsp cornflour (cornstarch)
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp / 12g butter
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

 Measure out 1 cup / 250ml milk and pour it into a small saucepan.  Add the dark chocolate pieces.

 Measure out the remaining 3/4 cup / 150ml milk and leave it in the jug.  Add the two egg yolks and whisk together.  In a bowl, stir together the sugar, cornflour and salt.  Add the eggy milk and mix together.

 Now it's just stirring.  Gently heat the milk and chocolate, stirring constantly, until the chocolate melts.  Add the sugar mixture gradually, whisking as you go, then keep stirring until it boils.  You will think it's not thickening, then it suddenly will, all at once.  Turn the heat down and cook for a minute longer (don't stop stirring!), then remove from the heat and stir in the butter and vanilla.  Pour into a bowl.  If you don't want a skin, press some clingfilm (plastic wrap) directly onto the surface.  Leave to cool.  If you're not eating it fairly soon, put it in the fridge.

You will notice that the recipe involves two egg yolks.  Which left me with two egg whites, which brings us neatly back to the meringues.

Meringues, say all the recipes, are very simple.  You take some egg whites, and a certain proportion of sugar for each egg white, and you whisk it all up...

...in a clean, grease-free bowl.  I have a sneaking suspicion I should have double-checked the grease-free-ness of my bowl.  Or maybe it was that my egg whites came straight out of the fridge.  Whatever it was, my meringues didn't stiffen up as much as I thought they should, despite a considerable amount of whisking.  Fortunately, this recipe involved adding cocoa powder, so in the end I shrugged, chucked the cocoa in, and came out with something that was just thick enough to pipe.



Cinnamon chocolate meringues

 2 egg whites
4 oz / 125g caster sugar
3 tbsp cocoa powder
1/4 tsp cinnamon

 Whisk the egg whites until just standing in peaks.  Add the sugar a tablespoon at a time, whisking between each addition (yes, this is as tedious as it sounds).  Keep whisking until the mixture is stiff (or in my case, just about not runny).  Sift the cocoa powder and cinnamon over, and fold in gently.

 Preheat the oven to 130C.  Line a couple of baking sheets with non-stick paper, and put the meringue mixture in a piping bags fitted with a star nozzle.  Pipe little stars (or lines, squiggles or whatever) onto the paper, and put into the oven.  Cook for an hour, switching over the trays halfway through, and then turn the oven off and leave them in the oven to cool.

 If you're feeling really decadent you can dip the bases in melted chocolate.  Or sandwich them together with whipped cream.

 They taste good, anyway - delicate airy puffs of chocolatey goodness.  Maybe I should make meringues more often.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Where am I going now? The Portway

I should probably explain why I am pottering around Nottingham and its western suburbs, rather than roaming the Derbyshire countryside. It's not just the abundance of paved paths, although that certainly helps - I recently went on a country walk across a cow field and found myself tiptoeing gingerly across boggy mud cratered with six-inch deep hoof holes. Then I was confronted by a sign which said: Private Property, Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted. I congratulated myself on being on a public right of way, then, a few steps on, consulted the map and realised I wasn't. The path was across a completely different field. nice scenery, though I digress. Apart from the absence of cows and angry landowners, the reason I am walking around Nottingham is that it's the start of the Portway. There is a blog called The Old Roads of Derbyshire , written by a man named Stephen Bailey, who has also published a book of the same name. I can't remember now whether I came across the book fir...
Post a Comment
Read more

Portway: Bramcote Hills to Stanton-by-Dale

I parked in the free car park at Bramcote Hills Park and set off, naturally enough, in the direction of where I'd last been. Up some steps through the woods, along the edge with marvellous views northwards, and down past a school to pick up Moor Lane again. At that point I realised I was supposed to be walking this route in the opposite direction. Oops. Well, it didn't make much difference. It just meant that the Hemlock Stone would come at the end rather than the start. Also, I was doing a figure of eight, so I could switch paths in the middle. That sorted, I pressed on along the disused Nottingham Canal. This had varying amounts of water in it. There were good views back up to the double hump of the Bramcote Hills. Nottingham Canal Also Nottingham Canal Just before I got to Trowell garden centre, I crossed a bridge and walked across a green space to a partly built housing estate. The Boundary Brook had been aggressively re-wiggled. I'm sure it will look better in a year...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Portway: Lenton to the Bramcote Hills

It was cold. My fingers were cold, and my phone was cold too. The OS map was totally failing to find my location, and the more I prodded it the less feeling I had in my fingers, so I gave up, shoved both my phone and my chilly hands into my pockets, and set off. After all, I knew where I was. This was Wollaton Park. And the path was very obvious. Just follow the avenue of trees... ...past the deer... ...and out through the fancy gates. Crossing a busy road brought me into a neat little housing estate with unusual round street signs. This was built when Wollaton Park was sold to Nottingham City Council in 1925. The old gatehouse, Lenton Lodge, is now estranged from the rest of the park, and stands by itself next to Derby Road. The bridge used to go over the Nottingham Canal, which has now been turned back into the River Leen. The unfortunate river got shoved out of the way whenever someone came up with a new building project. This is not its original course. My hands were warming up sli...
Post a Comment
Read more