Air cake home conditions. Secrets of cooking meringue

Superfluous squirrels always remain with those housewives who are fond of preparing desserts and baking. Where to put a lot of protein? Of course, let them start cooking meringues. After all, it is this air cake with a delicate crispy crust that will not leave indifferent any sweet tooth.

Refined Delicacy

Meringue has a lot of names, but they all represent something gentle, weightless, light. From French, this word is translated as "a gentle kiss." Pre-revolutionary Russia knew the air cake meringue as a "Spanish wind". Quite often this dessert is called "merengi". Beze, as many cooking books say, is just a protein cream, but a dried cream of proteins with a crispy crust is already meringue.

But whatever the name of this dessert, in which country it is cooked, you will not find a strong difference between the recipe. The composition of the cake is quite simple: protein and granulated sugar. However, an airy cake made from proteins is a fairly fragile and whimsical substance, an inexperienced culinary bringing in at times a lot of disappointments and unpleasant surprises.

Experienced cooks advise beginners if you want to cook at home meringue, do not run immediately to the refrigerator and do not get eggs from the tray. To begin with, you should "arm yourself" with theoretical knowledge, learn some of the secrets of cooking, and then start directly with the sculpture of the culinary masterpiece.

Ways of making meringue

Prepare at home, you can eat many dishes, including an air cake. The recipe with the photo you will find in our article. Today we will open a few secrets of cooking, which will surely prove useful for beginners mistresses.

The French way

So, there are several popular ways to prepare meringues. The simplest of these is the French method. It can be used in those cases when it is not required to make an air cake of some ornate complex shapes. The French version involves whipping chilled egg whites to a steep foam with the addition of a pinch of salt. Sugar sand is added only in the final stage of cooking. The protein mass in this case turns out to be rather magnificent. Hard peaks are a symbol of the correct consistency of the cream for meringues.

The Italian Way

Italian chefs came up with a slightly different way of making meringues. After you have chilled the cooled proteins, you should add to them not ordinary sugar, but a syrup prepared from sugar in advance. It turns out that a steep, almost boiling syrup, you make the proteins, and they will not fall off after baking. Such a protein cream is perfect for making complex forms of cakes, as well as for layering cakes. In addition, the Italian version allows you to add butter, if necessary to prepare a cream for the cake. The French version, when combined with fats, will flow.

Swiss way

The most dense and persistent air cake meringue is obtained from Swiss culinary experts. But this method is considered to be the most time consuming and long, since a water bath participates in the preparation. But if you have enough patience to make a meringue in a water bath according to the Swiss technique, then you can easily draw the resulting cream with ornate patterns on cakes, set it on unusual cookie shapes. Such cream will not fall off, it will not fail when baking, it will not leak out.

Necessary ingredients

• Protein from five eggs.
• 250 grams of granulated sugar.
• A pinch of salt or a teaspoon of lemon juice.

Cooking process

Prepared dishes, ingredients. We start whipping the squirrels. Add a pinch of salt or citric acid. Beat at a slow speed until the appearance of small air bubbles. Gradually add to the mass of powdered sugar. Continue manipulation to a sufficient density of the cream. He should not crawl from the corolla, should be, as the culinary experts call it, rigid peaks.

Prepare the pan, lining it with oiled paper. You can mow the meringue with a special confectionery syringe, or with a regular table spoon.

The oven is preheated to 80-100 degrees. Depending on the size and thickness of cakes, they should be baked for one and a half to two hours. When the meringue is ready, do not rush to remove them from the baking tray. Allow the dish to cool slightly. When the cakes are cool, gently lift them over the sheet and remove.

Secrets of cooking

So, you have chosen for yourself a convenient and acceptable way of preparing meringues. Now it remains to learn a few secrets, knowledge of which will help even the inexperienced mistress create an exquisite, airy culinary miracle.

• When starting meringue, remember that the proteins must necessarily be fresh.
• When you prepare an air cake at home, try to break each egg over a separate dish. Of course, you were promised in the store that the eggs are better, but sometimes there are incidents. Agree, it will be very unpleasant if to four good squirrels one smelling "something" will be added. The work is spoiled, start over again. And do you need it ?!
• In order to quickly dissolve the sugar in the protein cream, pre-resin it into a fine powder. You can buy and ready in the store. Remember, the smaller the sugar, the faster it will dissolve, so, the faster you will mass up.

• Some mistresses during whipping add a pinch of salt. But experienced connoisseurs advise all the same to give preference to citric acid or lemon juice. If you take acid, then for our recipe you need one teaspoon of citric acid, diluted in two teaspoons of water.
• The rule is mandatory, if you want to make an ideal air cake meringue - use only clean (very clean!) Utensils and coronets. On the instruments used there should be no hint of fat and other impurities.
• To get the ideal meringue on the output, use this trick. On a baking sheet, place a special baking paper on which you first draw even circles. When you sip a cream with a syringe, it will be easier for you to make all the cakes even and equal.