French meringue, only at first glance, an exotic dessert, and in fact include in its composition only a love tandem of two ingredients, proteins and sugar. However, the process of transforming prosaic products into a sweet dish is like some kind of magic.

Everyone decides to love them or not to love them individually, but learning how to cook French meringues is still worth every self-respecting mistress.


The variety and use of exquisite delicacies

The dessert itself called meringue implies a great many variations.


  • The French are the so-called "bezheshki". They are prepared by whisking sugar with proteins and then baking in the oven. Perfectly suited for air layers in cakes, as an independent pirozhenko and for making the notorious. Since in the process of whipping proteins do not undergo heat treatment, subsequent baking is obligatory.


  •   - whipping the same ingredients occurs in a water bath. Proteins are pasteurized, so feel free to use ready-made cake with a crispy crust for decorating cakes or just enjoy the taste of the solo.


  •   - ideal for use in a variety of multi-tiered cakes. Such yummies are the most dense and will not fade like yesterday's makeup on a tired lady.


French dessert "Versailles chic"

Do not be afraid to read the cooking instructions. The eyes are afraid, but the hands are doing. In the arsenal of home cooking you need to have:

  • proteins - 4 pcs .;
  • powdered sugar (you can sugar) - 200 gr.


The cooking process fits into this scheme:

  1. Proteins should stand at room temperature. In this case, whipping them will be much easier. 20-25 degrees is exactly what you need.
  2. Wash and dry all utensils and appliances. For fidelity, you can wipe all containers with lemon juice.
  3. French meringue is prepared by whipping proteins, first at low revs of the mixer. As soon as the squirrels become cloudy and a large froth forms, increase the tempo and start to add sugar in half a teaspoon. Do not hurry. If you add a large dose of sugar, your dessert will fall off and turn into a wrinkled “something”. Continue to beat to thicken the mass.
  4. The process of beating must be completed only if the proteins form straight peaks on the mixer rim, which do not slip, but remain proud to rise on the tip.
  5. Place airy French slides on a parchment-lined baking sheet. If there is no pastry bag, put the mass in a regular plastic bag and squeeze out beautiful cakes with a diameter of 5 cm.


Temperature and time mode depends on the desired result. If you want a crusty crust and a crusty type of molasses, put a baking sheet in an oven heated to 150 degrees for 5 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 60 degrees and bake for 15 minutes.


Fully baked crispy French delicacy - put the baking tray in the oven preheated to 50 degrees, bake for half an hour, then open the door and bake for another hour in this form.


French meringue recipe: problems and solutions

  • After baking, the French meringue “skukozhilis” opali, it means it is very quickly poured sugar. Initially, add in small portions and whisk carefully. Another good reason for the failure was a bit early. oven, not completely cooled after shutdown.
  • The cakes came out some strange sticky, wet, curves - affects a wet day (do not be surprised, even the humidity of the air affects the final result). There is nothing to be done, the only solution is to try to dry it in the oven.


  • After cooking, the French meringue was completely baked, firm, crunchy, in short, perfect. In the refrigerator, suddenly turned into a viscous wet mass. So your refrigerator is replete with moisture. Namely, moisture is the worst enemy of this delicacy. Crispy Pirozhenki store only in a dry place.


Macarons in the French Merengue "Embrassez la Reine"

The recipe for French meringues implies a multifaceted further use of the received bezheshek. Pasta on the French meringue is baked uncomplicated, and it turns out a dessert worthy of the king himself.

The scheme of preparation of 70 halves of the most beautiful and delicious macaroons that will please the eye and delight the taste buds is as follows:

  • almond flour - 165 gr .;
  • icing sugar- 165 g .;
  • sugar sand - 150 g .;
  • 4 egg whites;
  • salt-shchipot;
  • food coloring-1 sachet.


Macaroons on the French meringue, start cooking like this:

  1. Mix almond flour, powder and salt with a blender. Sift the resulting mass so that the almond pieces of flour do not fall into the next mass.
  2. Take care of cooking meringue directly. At a slow speed, beat the warm squirrels, as soon as they begin to thicken, increase the speed and add sugar slightly. Beat until strong peaks form. Fix the result, continuing to beat for a minute after receiving a strong mass.
  3. Combine the protein mass gently with an almond and sugar mixture with a spatula. Knead to the state when the resulting dough will continuously flow from the spatula.
  4. Put the mass in the pastry bag and squeeze the neat cakes on the parchment covered with parchment.
  5. Bake pasta at a temperature of 150 degrees for about 15 minutes.
  6. Remove the baked pasta in the French meringue from the pan and let it lie down, cooling down at room temperature on paper.


Gentle and airy dessert is ready. If desired, add any food coloring to the cooking process, and spread the halves with your favorite cream. Bright macaroni will undoubtedly appeal to both adults and children.


You will not regret if you take the recipe for French meringue “on a pencil”. After all, cute and tender lumps can become crumbling cakes, and can replace the air layer of the cake, if desired, replace the basket for butter cream  and filler for ice cream.


A bright and festive pasta in the French meringue will simply scatter from the table.


Video: Preparing French meringues correctly

Meringue can be safely called a culinary paradox - being very simple confectionery  of only two components (protein and sugar), it manages to look like real sophistication. And sometimes it requires considerable culinary skill, as well as knowledge of a large number of nuances. Today's guest post from the project "Manif TV" presents to your attention that it will be interesting and useful to learn to all lovers of sweets.

  Meringue or meringue?

There is an opinion that meringue and meringue are not the same thing. According to this view, meringue is an egg cream made from whipped proteins and sugar, and meringue is a crunchy product made in a certain form from meringue. Whether this opinion is legitimate or not is a question for a separate discussion. Further in the article, the word "meringue" will be meant exactly protein cream, and the word meringue - baked crunch.

The very word "meringue" (fr. Baiser) came to us from the French language, and translates as "kiss." The origin of the word "meringue" is not so clear. According to one version, it also came from the French language, which came from German, namely from the name of the Swiss city of Meiringen (it is Meiringen), where for the first time the treat was invented and baked by pastry chef Gasparini. Date of appearance - XVII century. Like many other brilliant inventions, meringue came into the world purely by chance - Gasparini once got so carried away by churning proteins that they turned into a cool foam. Since this gentleman loved culinary experiments, without hesitation he sent foam to the oven. The result is a crispy cake that quickly gained popularity among the local nobility, and then among the common people.

At the end of the 17th century, the recipe for meringue in the form in which it is used now appears in the culinary book of the famous chef Francois Massialo. There is a version that Massialo developed this recipe on his own, so as not to throw out the egg whites, often left without need. And he also introduced the term "meringue" in use. Whether he created this recipe himself, or based on the experience of his Swiss colleague is not known for certain. However, the fact that the meringue quickly gained popularity due to taste and ease of manufacture is a fact.

  Meringue recipes

There are three meringue recipes:

  • french (the one we are used to)
  • swiss
  • italian

  Meringue in French


3.5 hours

Ingredients

2 servings

2 chicken eggs

150 g powdered sugar

if desired - 1/3 tsp instant coffee

Separate the egg whites from the yolks, then beat the whites to a slightly standing foam. Then continue to beat until a thick standing foam, gradually falling asleep sugar. Squeeze meringue from the finished meringue of any shape, put it on paper and send it to the oven, preheated to 100-110 degrees. Leave the oven door ajar while baking. After two or three hours, remove the sheet from the oven and voila - in front of you are sweet crunchy meringues.

In the meringue, you can add coffee to give it a beautiful shade and more refined taste: unlike cocoa, it does not precipitate proteins. It is not necessary to scrape away the meringues - after cooling, they themselves exfoliate from the parchment.

  Swiss Meringue


1,5 hour

Ingredients

2 servings

2 chicken eggs

150 g of powdered sugar

Prepare a container with hot waterand place an egg beater in it. Pour the squirrels with powdered sugar into the cup, then start to beat. The peculiarity of this method is that all the sugar can be added to proteins at once. After receiving a thick uniform standing foam, squeeze out the meringue from it, and send it to the oven preheated to 100-110 degrees.

Swiss meringue is much thicker and denser than the classic, and also prone to quick drying. Forms of it can be baked for an hour, or even less, and being hard outside, they will remain soft inside.

Swiss meringue is quite elastic and perfectly keeps the given shape. From it you can make meringues with ornate patterns that do not spread and do not shed. Some cooks put a water bath on the stove and beat it right there, but we do not recommend this, because it is easy to prevent the water from overheating on the stove. Water temperature for heating should not exceed 42-43 degrees.

  Meringue in Italian


1,5 hour

Ingredients

2 servings

2 chicken eggs

200 g of sugar

100 g of water

Truly easy and airy is meringue in Italian. To make it, first put sugar in the pan and pour it over with water, bring the mixture to a boil and boil until the sugar dissolves and the mixture thickens slightly. Then remove the syrup from the hob. Beat the whites into a slightly standing froth, then slowly pour a hot syrup into it with a thin stream (it should not have time to cool down much, but, at the same time, it should not be boiling). When pouring the syrup, beat the mass intensively until it thickens.

In the first moments, it may seem that the mixture is too liquid and will not vzbitsya at all - do not give in to this impression, because with proper persistence meringue is whipped very successfully. From this cream you can make light air meringues melting in your mouth (they are baked in the same way as the two previous varieties). However, it is better to use it for coating cakes, because it does not dry for a long time and does not stratify, unlike its French and Swiss counterparts.

  General rules for cooking meringue

  • The container in which the eggs are whipped should be completely dry, without droplets of water and fat. Just one crazy drop of water left on the walls of the pot for beating eggs - and you can forget about the thick standing foam. Even if the foam is almost whipped up, a liquid syrup will accumulate at the bottom, not allowing the squirrels to whip up to sharp peaks (as is usually called steep, almost fixed foam).
  • Sugar should be added only after the proteins are whipped into a light foam - otherwise the same effect can be observed as when there are droplets of moisture or fat on the walls of the container. The exception is meringue in Swiss.



  So you should beat the foam before you start adding sugar
  • Hitting even one drop of yolk will put a fat cross on thick foam. To prevent this, you can use this trick: break an egg at both ends - the protein will come out by itself, and the yolk will remain in the egg. Leftover protein can be scraped out by breaking a broken egg along. And if a drop of yolk still slipped into the protein mass, it can be pulled out, prying eggshell.
  • The meringues are not baked, but rather dried. That is why throughout the cooking process, the oven must be kept slightly ajar (1-1.5 cm). In a closed oven, meringues will remain soft (due to incomplete drying), and can burn.
  • You should not use stale sugar powder for whipping proteins - it should only be freshly prepared. Otherwise, the effect will be the same as in the first paragraph, because the powdered sugar after a short time is saturated with moisture, absorbing it from the air.



  Foam tightly adhering to the corolla - a sign of a job well done
  • Store meringues in a closed container or in a tightly tied bag, otherwise they will absorb moisture from the air and become soft. However, there is an interesting point here - if you just have time to put some time in a closed container for a while, they will restore their hardness and dryness. True, with meringues that have softened to a greater degree, such a number will not roll.

Merengo is also called the kind of Latin American dance. And it should be noted that the rhythms of this dance are very similar to the rhythms of the mixer, whipping proteins.

In Tsarist Russia, the term “Spanish wind” was used instead of the word “meringue”. It was believed that their lightness and rustle are very similar to the warm summer breeze.

In dry weather, when the air humidity is low, beating eggs into thick standing foam is much easier than with high air humidity. The consistency of egg cream will be extremely thick without adding the notorious pinch of salt or citric acid.

The largest meringue was baked in 1985 in the city of Frutal (Switzerland). 120 kg of sugar and 2500 eggs were spent on its production. The length of the meringue-record holder was more than 100 meters, and the weight was more than 200 kg. For its baking, a separate oven was built, and such a meringue was served with 80 liters of pastry cream (which is not reported specifically).

Professional chefs to achieve maximum air mass, use a hand whisk, and beat the foam with scuffing (rather than smearing) movements, trying to get as much air as possible. Thus, the foam is abundantly filled with bubbles, giving it lightness and airiness.




  The spiral corolla is the best in the air, making the foam as lush and standing as possible.

P.S. Such "kisses" (meringues) will be an excellent gift for the fair sex, especially since March 8 is not far off. Delight your ladies with delicious air meringues. How to make them truly festive and romantic is described in

   Saturday, January 16, 2016

Do you know why meringue cookies are called kisses? Everything is transparent: in translation from French baiser there is a kiss. Why am I doing this? And the fact that today we are preparing the French meringue - the basis for these same kisses. Airy, fluffy and practically weightless snow-white mass of egg whites and sugar, which are simply whipped together. Do you want to cook the French meringue in due form? Then you are at!

The French meringue is rightly considered the most popular and easiest to prepare. But, by the way, this is the most unstable meringue from all three types of protein cream (there is also Italian and Swiss). In addition, due to the lack of heat treatment, French meringue is not recommended to be used raw - it is better to use it in dishes that are subsequently baked. So the probability of infection with salmonella is minimized. And another thing: the French meringue is a cream that you should do immediately before use, because after a while it just starts to settle.

Scared, yes? No, not at all, I was not even going to frighten you. Just warned, so to speak, what kind of “beast” is this and how to work with it. Meanwhile, the French meringue is the basis for the confectioner's limitless imagination. This is not only a popular meringue cookie, but also an integral part of Pavlova's magnificent cake. Cakes and top layer for other cakes (especially with the addition of nuts), soufflé, air desserts  - not the whole list of sweet dishes, which include the French meringue.

Now a bit of technology. Prepare this type of protein cream from egg whites and granulated sugar (it can be partially or completely replaced with powdered sugar). As a rule, sugar is used by weight twice as much as protein (2: 1). That is, if one is raw protein from medium chicken eggs weighs 25-30 grams, then sugar is needed exactly 2 times more - 50-60 grams.

Proteins can be used both chilled and at room temperature (I always beat cold ones, although some cooks use both hands for the second option). As a result of whipping, the protein mass can be of different degrees of stability - soft, medium and hard peaks. Be that as it may, the finished French meringue (like the other two types) should turn out smooth and glossy (glitter). If suddenly the mass looks lumpy, friable, harsh and does not shine - you just re-beat it (and it happens, do not hesitate).

Still not tired to read? Then I will share with you a little, my beloved sweets, a little secret. Namely - how to bake the French meringue. So, if you like meringue cookies (or what are you planning to cook there?) With a crispy crust and a soft middle, you need to bake the baked out pieces in a preheated oven at 140-150 (I was not mistaken, just like that!) after which the temperature drops to 60 degrees and the meringue is cooked for about another 15 minutes

If you are not friendly with the exact time (I myself am such, but for the site I do everything exactly), you can simply navigate by the appearance of the meringue-almost-meringue. We do everything as it is written above (I’m talking about heat and 4-5 minutes). We saw that the cookies went cracked - just turn off the oven and leave the meringue to cool. The result is a tender, soft filling under a crispy thin crust.

The classic version of the preparation of meringue cookies provides a white crust and the same filling, which must also be completely dried and crispy. To do this, it would be ideal to dry the deposited French meringue at 90-100 degrees for about 1 hour (time is a relative concept), while periodically opening the door or leaving it completely ajar for the entire drying process. Try, experiment, rejoice or grieve the result - the main thing is what you want, which means you will succeed!

Ingredients:

Cooking steps by step with a photo:



For the preparation of air French meringue, we need only two ingredients - egg whites and granulated sugar. You can also take a pinch of salt (it helps the whites better to whip) and a teaspoon of lemon juice (for shine, greater stability of the meringue and defatting the whipping dishes). Incidentally, the proteins I had were frozen, and then simply thawed out overnight in the refrigerator. I often cook dishes on egg yolks, so I simply collect the squirrels in a bag and store them in the freezer. There is no difference between fresh and frozen proteins for meringue.



So, in addition to the products we need the right utensils and a mixer. We take a bowl, wash it and dry thoroughly. You can degrease it with lemon juice, and then again thoroughly rub it dry. Pour cold squirrels and, if desired, pour a tiny pinch of salt (but this is not at all necessary). By the way, the question of the temperature of proteins: some chefs argue that warm (room temperature) proteins result in a softer foam. But personally, I prefer working with chilled - I did not notice much difference.

February 12, 2017 1546

The term "meringue" is often used by art confectioners. Each of us may encounter him, trying to cook a tasty cake, a cake or another dessert with a new recipe, or ordering a cake from the pastry chef for your birthday or a loved one. Therefore, it will be interesting for everyone to find out what the “wonderful beast” is behind this word.

Merengue - what is it?

Meringue is a gentle cream made of proteins, whipped with sugar. Merengues are often confused with meringues, but this is not true. Meringue is the basis of meringue, which after heat treatment turns into a no less tasty, but a different dessert. The origin of the name, as well as the dish itself, has several versions.

According to the most common version, the name of the dessert was given by the Swiss town of Meiringen, located near the Reichenbach Falls. The waterfall is famous for the fact that the battle between the brilliant detective Sherlock Holmes and the brilliant villain Moriarty in the work of AK Doyle.

And the town is famous for the fact that the Italian cook Gasparini lived there, who from the remaining after cooking the main course of proteins and sugar came up with an airy dessert.

In two other versions, France and Poland are home to meringue. In Poland, we are sure that the name of the meringue comes from the Polish word marzynka, and the cook was invented by the cook of King Stanislav I Leschinsky. His daughter later married Louis XV and contributed this recipe to French cuisine.

The French cite the fact that the first written description of this dessert was made by their chef Massialo in his cookbook. Therefore, they consider France to be the birthplace of the meringue. But let Switzerland, Poland and France continue to argue about who invented the air meringue, and sweets will enjoy its delicate taste.

Species

Depending on the method of whipping proteins with sugar, there are three types of meringue:

  1. French
  2. Swiss;
  3. Italian

Consider how whipped proteins for each of the species, and how it affects the final result.

So, when they say French meringue, they mean proteins just beaten with sugar without any heat treatment. By a large number  sugar, with which I whip proteins, the dessert is quite stable and dense, it keeps its shape well.

For Swiss meringue, proteins, along with sugar, are heated on a steam bath until it is completely dissolved, and then, continuing to heat, beat in a fluffy mass. The result is a mass whipped a little worse than the previous method.

After the Swiss and French meringue, it would be logical to assume the existence of the Polish (by the names of countries claiming to be recognized as an inventor). But no, the next is Italian meringue.

In the process of its preparation, hot sugar syrup is poured into the whipped whites in a thin stream, without stopping the beating. The temperature of the syrup is 110-118 degrees. This heat treatment avoids salmonella infection.

What do "peaks" mean? What are they?

For a cook, peaks are not card suits, but the degree of protein overrun. There are three types of peaks:

  1. Soft peaks;
  2. Medium peaks;
  3. Hard (hard) peaks.

Peaks are determined by appearance and the ability of the masses to remain on the corona. For soft peaks, a well-whipped protein is characteristic, which, however, does not stick to the rim, but slides down to the bottom. This degree of overrun is suitable for souffles and biscuits.

At medium peaks, the protein mass is able to stay on the corolla, but its tip falls off and wraps around with a loop. Since proteins with soft and medium peaks can still grow in volume, both of these degrees of overrun are suitable for biscuits.

Proteins, whipped to hard peaks, have the most dense structure, so they do not fall off the corolla, and their tip stands unshakably at any position of the corolla. Such a mass does not have significant potential to increase and best of all keeps its shape. It is suitable for making creams and meringues.

Beating whites to hard peaks, it should be remembered that they can and perevozbit. In this case, the mass will become grainy, liquid will be released, and, in the end, it will separate.

Cooking Application


In cooking, each type of meringue has become widespread. Thus, the French - is best suited for cooking meringue, glazing cakes, gingerbread and cakes.

Italian meringue serves as the basis of butter creams, ideal for decorating the tops of the cake or cupcakes. Swiss meringue in its characteristics is something between a French and Italian, so it can be used almost everywhere.

Meringues became the basis for many popular desserts: air meringues, elegant Pavlova cake, dacoise with nuts, Kiev cake, macaroons, sand baskets  with protein cream, lemon tart. This protein cream became the basis for the Swiss butter meringue (protein butter cream), which is filled with eclairs and profiteroles, decorated with cakes.

Any dessert with meringue becomes light, tender, airy and unusually tasty. And where to apply it, depends only on the imagination of the pastry chef.

How to cook meringue: 3 basic recipes

Above it was told about the technology of beating different types of meringue, and now it is worth talking about the preparation of each of them in more detail.

French

This protein cream has the most unstable structure, with time it can fall off, but it is very easy to prepare. Only because of the lack of heat treatment of yolks it is not recommended to eat it raw.

For the French meringue, proteins and sugar must be taken in a 1: 2 ratio. So, for one portion you will need:

  • 1 protein;
  • 55 g sugar;
  • 1 teaspoon lemon juice for degreasing dishes;
  • 3 g of salt.

The time of whipping protein will be 10-15 minutes.

The caloric content of this meringue is 265 kcal / 100 g.

Algorithm cooking.

  1. Clean the bowl and whips of the mixer with fat and lemon;
  2. Protein put in a bowl, add a pinch of salt and start to beat at low speed mixer;
  3. When the squirrels start foaming and become airy, move to medium speed;
  4. Beating the mass at medium speed, add 1 tablespoon of sugar and beat until completely dissolved;
  5. When the sugar dissolves go to high speed and beat another 1-2 minutes. When the bowl is turned over, the ready-made French meringue does not move a single millimeter and has hard peaks.

Swiss

Protein-custard, prepared in this way, is obtained airy and tender with a glossy surface. For it is necessary to prepare proteins and sugar in the following proportions:

  • 2 squirrels;
  • 120 grams of sugar.

Cream preparation time - 20 minutes.

100 g of this dessert contains 268 kcal.

Working process:



Italian

In this cream recipe, along with proteins and sugar, another ingredient is used - water, from which the syrup is brewed. The result is a virtually weightless, airy and light cream, for which you need to prepare:

  • 2 squirrels;
  • 150 grams of sugar;
  • 40 ml of water.

It will take 40 minutes to prepare the meringue in this way.

Calorie cream - 253 kcal / 100 g

Sequence of processes:

  1. In a skillet with a thick bottom, cook sugar syrup from 100 g of sugar and 40 ml of water. When the syrup boils, let it boil for 5-6 minutes, then make a soft ball test: put a drop of syrup in a bowl with cold water  and roll the frozen ball between your fingers. If it is soft, then the syrup is ready;
  2. Squirrel whip from 50 g of sugar to soft peaks, then pour boiling sugar syrup in a thin stream, trying not to fall on the walls of the mixer bowl and its corollas, as it quickly hardens;
  3. After all the syrup has been introduced into the proteins, the mass should be continued to beat until it is completely cooled. It will take no more than 5-7 minutes. The finished cream has a very dense structure and it is difficult to shake it off the corolla.

Although in the preparation of meringues, it seems, there is nothing difficult, but do not neglect some of the tips that will help avoid failure:

  1. Dishes and whisk mixer should be perfectly dry and clean, without the slightest drop of fat. For the purpose of reinsurance, you can wipe them with lemon juice;
  2. Cooks never agreed on what the temperature of the proteins should be before beating: cold or warm. Practice shows that it does not matter. They will scramble anyway;
  3. For the Italian and Swiss meringue it is better to use eggs a week ago, and for the French - only the freshest, because they are not subjected to heat treatment;
  4. For protein cream, you must take fine sugar or powdered sugar. Large crystals will dissolve for a long time, and there is a risk of perebeating meringue;
  5. Beat the whites to start at slower speeds, and when they are well saturated with oxygen, move to higher ones.

Successful culinary experiments!

French Merega (FR) - egg whites whipped with sugar into a stable foam. Meringue is of three types: French (raw proteins, whipped with sugar), Italian (proteins brewed with boiling sugar syrup) and Swiss (proteins are heated with sugar to a temperature of 45-60 C, and then beaten). Baked French & Swiss. meringue is called meringue.  - it is whipped with sugar proteins. Applied Proteins whipped with sugar and / or powdered sugar without preheating (cold method) are called French meringue. It is used mainly as a basis for further baking products or as an additive in creams. French meringue is baked in the form of small cakes or large cakes, added to biscuit dough, soufflé dough, oil creams, etc.  for easy baking air cookie  - meringue, as well as the base or component for various types of biscuits.

Instruments

Proteins can be whipped manually or with any mixer - stationary or manual.

Power appliance does not matter. Proteins will climb anyway, only manually or using a weak mixer will take more time.

The only important thing when whipping proteins is the type of tool itself, the nozzle.

A nimbus can be in the form of a drop, ball, spring or panicle (with or without balls at the ends), a comb. In hand mixers, the beaters often look like two frames that intersect during rotation.

In the photo you can see some types of tools or appliances that can be used for whipping.


And what specifically to use is not essential.

It is impossible to beat in a blender or in a food processor, i.e. in any device that has knives as a working attachment!

2. Utensils for beating.

It is known that the most stable proteins are whipped in copper dishes because of the chemical interaction of copper and proteins.
  All other types of materials do not affect the quality of whipping.

A bowl for manual whipping should be chosen with the most rounded bottom, made of glass or metal (plastic does not wash off fat well). In addition, given that one hand will be occupied with sugar, it is worthwhile to put the bowl on a damp kitchen towel folded several times, so the bowl will lock onto the table.

Beating dishes should be degreased. It perfectly copes with boiling water or a slice of lemon (wipe the bowl and whisk with it). Then the dishes and the whisk must be wiped dry.

Proteins are whipped even with a small amount of fat - modern technology copes with it wonderfully!
  But fat affects the stability of the meringue, and to make it stable is our main task.
  Likewise, moisture affects the stability of the meringue.
  And what is a stable meringue? It is a meringue that does not stratify during baking and / or storage into water and dry ingredients.

  Bowl should be spacious. If you use a food processor, it must be without an airtight lid, since need air access to proteins.

1. Which eggs to use.

Super-fresh eggs are needed only when the protein will be used without heat treatment. For example, you want to add raw whipped protein in ice cream or cream.

In all other cases - it is better to use eggs a week ago or more.

The protein in such eggs is drier, the eggs are known to dry out during storage. And the drier the protein, the better it will climb.

2. How to separate the whites and yolks.

Cold eggs are best of all separated into white and yolk, since the cold yolk has a stronger shell and does not tear as easily as the warm one.

but. Prepare 4 bowls: one for the whites, one for the yolks, one for those eggs in which the white and yolk are not divided, and one auxiliary one over which you will divide the eggs.

It is worth adhering to just such a system of egg separation, because if some protein is spoiled by hitting the yolk, or shell, or a spoiled egg falls, you don’t have to throw out all the whites!

b. Wash your hands and eggs with hot water and dish soap (to avoid salmonella that is on the egg shell).
  at. Break the egg and pour it into a bowl.



  g. With your fingers, grab the yolk from the bowl and let the squirrel flow freely through the open fingers.



  e. Put the yolk in the bowl number one, pour the white in the bowl number two. If you are unlucky, and the shell of the yolk is torn, and it got into protein, pour the protein along with the yolk into a bowl number three.


3. What temperature should be proteins.

In order to whip proteins in a cold way in 99 cases out of 100, proteins should be at a temperature of 22-25 degrees. And only if the recipe specifically states that proteins should be cold, are proteins from the refrigerator used.

To quickly heat cold proteins, you can put a cup of proteins in warm water, and they heat up very quickly.

During protein churning, air enters the molecular sieve and is held there.
In a warm protein, the molecular network is more tensile, more flexible, and will be able to accommodate more air bubbles.

In order to clearly show this, I conducted an experiment.

She took two squirrels from exactly the same eggs.

As you can see, I weighed them, so that the amount of protein can be considered almost the same.

Carefully separated the yolks. Squirrels poured into identical bowls.


One sent for an hour in the fridge, the second left on the table.
  An hour later, she measured an equal amount of fine sugar and, using a hand-held electric mixer (so that there were equal conditions), beat the proteins in turn.

What happened?

The volume of whipped warm protein is more than cold - it can be seen with the naked eye.


The explanation for this is simple - the structure of the warm protein is more tensile, therefore it absorbs much more air and becomes more magnificent.

And now let's take a look at the middle of the whipped protein.

This is how cold protein looks inside - it is quite dense ...

And this is warm protein. What are the air bubbles inside it! Not surprisingly, it is more magnificent!

But that's not all.
  See how differently they keep their shape:

Here it is warm: clear forms, stable relief.

And this is cold - the form is more blurry, the edges are smoothed.

Here they are in twenty minutes: the warm one keeps the form, the cold one is already partially blurred.
  In the oven, it will completely lose its shape and spread out.


So why argue that you need to beat cold squirrels?

It's very simple - cold protein is whipped faster. In those days, when there were no electric mixers, churning proteins was a long process, quite laborious - so the proteins were cooled. Yes, and they had time to warm up from the heat of the hands for the time it took to beat them.

Industrial production also uses chilled proteins - if we are talking about the simultaneous beating of a large mass of proteins, which requires a long time, plus strict sanitary standards that regulate such processes.

At home, with modern mixers, it is better to heat proteins.

Cold protein products are more dense and rise worse during baking.

1. Beating sugar should be as fine as possible.
  In addition, it is desirable to buy a good quality sugar, which is well soluble in water.

These requirements are met by special confectionery sugar - fine and very clean.

Grains of sugar are an abrasive, while whipping they increase the effect of the corolla on proteins, so that the more grains, the better the beating.
In addition, the sugar must dissolve during whipping to bind the water that makes up the protein. The finer the sugar, the better it dissolves.

Depending on the recipe, sugar can be sprinkled all during the beating or partially - during the beating, partially - it is interfered with completely beaten proteins.

2. It is not recommended to use powdered sugar for whipping proteins! Proteins with powdered sugar are too dense and have a small volume.

This is explained by the fact that the powder dissolves too quickly and, due to the hygroscopicity of sugar, has the ability to absorb moisture, instantly turning into syrup.

Therefore, when beating it is usually used sugar, and for interfering in proteins - powdered sugar.

Ready-made icing sugar, bought in a store, always contains starch! It is added to maintain the flowability of powdered sugar. This should be taken into account, since the introduction of starch in the meringue affects both the structure of the product and the taste. Baked meringues with powdered sugar dry faster, because starch binds the fluid found in proteins. On the other hand, the volume of such meringues is less, they come out denser, the taste of starch will probably be felt, and you should be prepared for this.

3. Do I need salt and / or acid when chipping protein?

In some books it is written that while whipping, add a pinch of salt and creme of tartar (tartar, Powder white, with a sour taste. By chemical composition  - sour wine salt. It is produced from petrified sediment in wine barrels. It is used as an acid component in baking powder and as a stabilizer for whipping protein. Replaced with citric acid or vinegar., tartaric acid salt) to stabilize the protein.
  In others, all you need to do is add only the creme of tartar.
  In the third - that nothing needs to be added.

Science says the following:

Chicken protein is 85% water, the remaining 15% are albumin, globulin, lysozyme and so-called cofactors (vitamins, minerals).
  There is a lot of water - in fact, it is an aqueous solution of protein. If we start just beating it, we get foam. Only this foam will be unstable, since the protein concentration is very low. To increase the concentration at home, we can not.
  And what can? To bind water, thereby increasing the viscosity of the solution! At the same time, we need to do this so that the protein does not precipitate!
  We increase the viscosity of the aqueous solution by adding sugar, and prevent the precipitation of protein by adding salt and acid.
At the same time, salt should be added at the beginning of beating, and acid should be better towards the end of beating, and in no case should the correct ratio be exceeded; otherwise, instead of stabilizing the protein, it will precipitate.

I didn’t make a focused comparison of how the addition or salt / acid addition does not affect the meringue.
  Heated with and without addition. There were no problems.
  As a rule, I follow the recipe if I trust the author.
  And you decide for yourself whether to add or not.

Technology

1. Prepare sugar: measure the desired amount, take a sheet of thick paper, bend it in half and pour sugar into it.

2. Pour the whites into a bowl placed on a wet towel.

3. Begin whipping whites at low speed.
  At this stage, the task is to stretch the molecular bonds in order to drive as much air into the proteins as possible.

Squirrels gradually grow cloudy and turn into foam with large air bubbles inside.


4. In the protein foam, without ceasing to beat, start adding sugar.

The technique of adding sugar is as follows: take a sheet of paper in which sugar is poured, and pour sugar into proteins from the bend of a sheet of thin continuous “trickle”.


5. After all the sugar has been added, increase the speed of beating and continue to beat until the foam becomes dense, white, shiny, and until the meringue beats to the degree you need.

Degrees of overrun

First degree: soft peaks.

If you raise the whisk from the bowl with the whipped protein, a small amount of protein will hang on its rods, hanging in the form of tongues.


If the whisk with the remnants of protein to lift up, the tongues immediately bent. If you try to tilt the bowl with these squirrels, the squirrels will begin to slowly crawl along the side of the bowl.

Second degree: medium peaks.

If you raise the whisk from the bowl with the whipped protein as described above, the sharp tongues will bend, but not immediately, but after a few seconds. The whipped protein mass does not spill out of the inverted bowl.

Third degree: hard peaks.

If you raise the rim from the bowl with the squirrels, as described above, then clear peaks are formed, the tongue of which does not bend, but remains sharp as a needle.

The fourth degree: dry proteins.

If you raise the whisk from the bowl of squirrels, then inside the whisk rods there remains a tight ball of whipped protein, which is held very tightly there.

Fifth degree: spoiled meringue.

If you beat the whites for too long, then the liquid is cut off. The meringue loses its stability and volume, liquefies and becomes “pockmarked”, similar to cottage cheese with whey.

For each particular type of baking, it is usually indicated which type of meringue is used and to what extent it is necessary to beat the meringue.

In general, for baking meringue or decorating cakes or meringue, beat until hard peaks, and for making thick dough with whipped proteins - until soft or medium peaks.

There are several methods of baking meringue.

General directions.

1. The oven should be preheated. Even if the thermometer shows the desired temperature, warm the oven for another 10 minutes so that the temperature is uniform throughout the volume.

2. The meringue is baked on sheets covered with baking paper or on a silicone mat. Baking paper can be lightly greased and sprayed with flour, but, in principle, can be baked without smudging.

3. You can sift off the whipped protein with a spoon, you can use a pastry bag with nozzles “asterisk” or “straw”.

4. How long to bake and at what temperature - depends on the specific recipe.
  The term "bake" in this case - a tribute to convention. In fact, meringues are not so much baked as they are dried.

Modes baking.



If the goal is to get a fully baked meringue, tasty, airy, but donate a bit of whiteness and perfect forms, then you should do so:

Preheat the oven to 130-140 degrees, put a meringue and immediately reduce the temperature to 100 - 110 degrees, and after 15 minutes - to 50-60 degrees (if possible) or continue to bake with the door slightly open.


If the goal is to get a snow-white meringue that has completely preserved its shape, but is dense - then bake from the very beginning at a temperature of 50-60 C.

If you want to get a white, air meringue and you are not afraid of cracks on the surface - start the oven at 110 ° C and after 15 minutes reduce the temperature to 60-70 C.

Special types of meringues, like the pavlova cake, are generally baked at a temperature of 160 to 200 C.

5. Baking time cannot be predicted in advance - be patient.

Usually in books they write: one and a half - two hours. I have never managed to dry the meringue in such a short time. It takes me up to 5-6 hours. I usually bake meringue in the evening and leave it to dry in the oven for the whole night. But from a security point of view, this baking method can only be recommended for those who have electric ovens.

You can check the merengue by puncturing it with a knife.

Warm meringue may be slightly viscous in the middle, so the degree of baking should be checked only in the cooled product.

Recipes meringue set.

The most standard: for 1 protein - 1/4 cup of sugar.

Proteins are different, sugar, too, and even a glass is different.

Recipe from "Culinary Bible" Irma Rombauer:

125 ml of protein + 200 g of sugar
  or
  125 ml of protein + 135 grams of sugar (beat) + 120 grams of powdered sugar (mix)

recipe from the book "Desserts" school Cordon Blue:

2 protein + 155 grams of fine sugar.

In order to bake the perfect meringue, you need to experiment with your particular oven, as well as to choose the recipe that you like most.
  I can only note the following: the more sugar, the denser the meringue will be and the lower the baking temperature should be.
  This is explained by the fact that sugar is caramelized from heating and, on the one hand, gives greater stability to the structure of the meringue, and on the other hand, turns into caramel when strongly heated and gives a creamy color and a taste of burnt sugar.
  Therefore, for ptyfurov with oily cream  You can use the volume ratio of proteins to sugar as 1: 2. But for a cake - ice cream with a thinner cream (for example, whipped cream) it is better to increase the amount of sugar to a ratio of 1: 3.

Storage

Baked meringue is very sensitive to moisture.
  The more sugar in the meringue, the denser it is obtained and the better it is stored.
  Therefore, store it in a hermetically sealed container and do not use creams containing liquid for the interlayer.
  If the meringue is still limp during storage - it can be dried again in the oven.

If the protein is not whipped: add a small amount of lemon juice or vinegar. Proteins will surely beat up, but will be more dense than without added acid.

If you perevezbili meringue, and she curdled, you can try to fix it.

Take another protein, start to beat it, as usual. Instead of adding sugar, start over a tablespoon of adding spoiled meringue. When all the protein becomes homogeneous, add the sugar that is required for the added protein.

If the meringues did not rise, but spread out on the leaf, if they burned inside, if a sticky syrup was released from them, then the following could be the reasons for the failure:

- the sugar-protein ratio is not exactly maintained. Next time, weigh and measure the sugar carefully.
- proteins whipped too much or too weak. You probably have too strong or too weak a mixer. If the mixer is too strong, stop it before the meringue reaches the desired degree of stiffness, and continue to beat with your hands. If the mixer is too weak - beat it longer and be sure to add acid, it will contribute to greater stability of the proteins.
  - high air humidity on the day of baking. Do not bake meringue in rainy weather.

- sugar of poor quality, did not have time to dissolve while beating. Change sugar. If this is not possible, grind the sugar in a mortar or blender.