Ingredients: Egg White Hoarding

Albumen Dilemma

One of the problems fed by my penchant for making mayonnaise and ice cream is egg-white hoarding. This goes hand in hand with saving things like bacon grease (but wait, it makes the best fried chicken or mayo for BLTs, really!) and leftover risotto (but I could make some sort of arancini!)  Obviously, a jar of egg whites often stares balefully at me from its assigned refrigerator shelf. In the winter, I use them to clarify stock, such a peaceful pastime looking through the peep hole in the egg white raft at the muddy stock made with  dutifully frozen bones from forbidden veal chops, beef roasts and steaks. But standing over a 20-quart stockpot filled with several months of bones in this heat fails to inspire peaceful contemplation. Instead, I will work on improving my upper arm strength by whisking egg whites. Pictured here is the test I learned from Mary Bond: if  an egg in the shell stands up in the whites, as shown here, you have reached the desired consistency.

I love making meringues, and I do it with mixed luck when the humidity hits tropical density. Sometimes, it works, and other times, well, it is best to view them as stand-alone meringue pie toppings aided by whipped cream and local fruits. 

Egg Whites Recipes To The Rescue

But here are three happy hot weather salvation egg whites recipes! I generally follow the advice and nagging reminders about keeping egg whites from BBC Good Food (although my egg whites in a jar keep much longer than two days…more like 6-8 days):

Egg whites will keep in the fridge for up to two days, but they can also be frozen for up to three months. Put them into freezer bags or individual ice cube trays so you can use as many as you need. Label them carefully, noting the number of whites – once you’ve defrosted them they can’t go back into the freezer. Defrost in the fridge overnight before using.

A Macaron Meets A Cookie

The first recipe is a 1997 invention by French pastry chef François Payard when he opened his original patisserie in Manhattan.  At one time Payard had three, and one of my favorite cookbook writers on baking, Joanne Chang earned her pastry stripes in his bakery kitchens. His shops are all closed now,  victims most likely of poor financial backing and management. But it was a regular stop for Cuisinettes when we were at the Fancy Food Show in New York. Having no desire to compete with iconic American cookies like chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin, Payard based his signature cookie off a French macaron, so it is a light confection with a chewy middle and a thin, crisp outer shell that’s made from little more than egg whites, chopped walnuts and sugar. I found it in his book Chocolate Epiphany and the ease of making  this delicious cookie has made it a favorite on numerous cooking sites.

A Cake Meets A Meringue

Viennese Blueberry Slices are a specialty of  the Cafe Diglas. which has four locations in Vienna, should you visit. It is one of many happy endings from an extraordinarily detailed book written by Rick Rodgers on Viennese, Hungarian and  Czech pastries. If you are in love with the art of Austro-Hungarian baking, you need Kaffeehaus by your mixer. His technique and two recipes for Sacher Torte are spot on. He gives you the correct glaze; it just takes a little practice. After ghostwriting many cookbooks (but this one under his sole signature remains my favorite) he too has retired but is now offering Zoom classes on baking. I can hardly wait for his fall classes – Dobos Torte is calling me. But back to this glorious and easy Beerenschaumschnitten, which I have been making for at least a decade of summers.

The base cake is a treat to make and can be used for many other toppings. Currants are ideal, according to Rodgers – but since they are truly difficult to find (due to an outdated ban on growing them in the US), I have used raspberries or blackberries as equally tasty alternatives. I have made this meringue and berry-topped cake many times in 90+F weather, and it has never failed to delight. 

A Friand Meets A Muffin

I have always wanted to be friends with muffins but I never buy them when given another choice at any travel terminal or highway stop. I have tried making them, and although almost anything is tasty hot out of the oven, muffins at room temperature rank just a bit above cold cereal for me. So I was surprised when I tried this recipe from The Last Course. We carried this  dessert book by Claudia Fleming in the shop when it first was published in 2001 — at the request of a prominent chef in DC. He told me she was the pastry chef he dreamed of hiring. I can see why. She has a very particular style – a little savory along with the sweet, and her unusual desserts were one of the standouts at New York’s Gramercy Tavern. She left that life with her husband to run a farm-to-table restaurant in Southold, Long Island. And then her husband was diagnosed with ALS and she spent several years taking care of him until his death in 2015.  She has since sold the restaurant and moved back to Manhattan. If you want to stretch your dessert repertoire in new but manageable directions, I could not recommend a better book. She adds just the right amount of cornmeal to an egg white-based cake batter, and these little blueberry cakes beat the hell out of any run-of-the-mill muffin.

GÖMA Universal Whisk

Copper Mixing Bowl