Monday, May 26, 2008

Bat-shaped Meringues


I pulled off some old pics of my keitai and was reminded of some old adventures. This I know was one of the many occasions we (Steff and I) made meringues. I'm not sure if we needed the yolks for something else and we just turned the whites into meringues or if we just wanted meringues and we dumped the yolks. In any case, chalk it up to another egg based adventure for the retards.

So meringues are super easy and a hell lot easier if you've got a good oven. The dorm's oven was seriously from the 80's and not only did it cook unevenly due to uneven heat distribution, it was just a pain to work with in general since it was so small. No American-sized jumbo ovens here. Anyway, if you've ever got some egg whites lying around (from making egg wash or pudding or something), you can easily make meringues without an egg beater. We've done it many times. You just add some sugar and a pinch of cream of tartar to the egg whites and beat until stiff. You can then use a pastry bag to pipe, or if you haven't got a pastry bag, a plastic ziploc bag should do the trick. Just snip the corner off and pipe away onto a piece of parchment paper. The trick with meringues is that you can't cook them on too high heat or they'll burn on the outside and the inside will still be runny and uncooked. Basically, you just put it on low heat, a couple notches above the lowest setting your oven can do should be fine and just let them bake slowly for about 10-15 minutes. They should dry out and get little golden brown tinges when they're done. You just let them sit after you pull them out and voila. Meringues.

This is a particularly nice picture because it reminds me of Steff and the dorm. You can see the cheap white plastic coated dining tables and that mustard colored chairs. There's Steff's keitai in the background and Steff's food. How do I know it's Steff's food and not my food? Well, the salad. Steff always ate the iceberg lettuce--none of that purpley leaves--no dressing. And I always eat the cabbage drowned in goma dressing for my daily rabbit grass intake. So that would be Steff's plate. And well, you see the little bat shaped meringue hanging out on the rim of the mugicha (barley tea) that we have every night. Only Steff. This is why we are partners in crime.

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