Happy Easter!
I love Easter eggs. Dyeing, hiding or making them. I’d add hunting but apparently I’m too old much like for trick-or-treating. I like that both involve a search for some type of treasure which is similar to the way I specifically go out to find pastries. Yes, that is my grown up way of participating in my childhood past times.
Because it is Easter, for this week’s Project assignment we skipped to the very last chapter of the book and made marshmallow eggs. I love homemade marshmallows. They go on my list of things that taste so much better from scratch. They melt beautifully in a cup of hot chocolate, so creamy in texture unlike the store-bought ones that just bob on the top, misshapen-ed from the heat. I did the recipe twice because the first attempt was a complete disaster, but in general this is a standard marshmallow recipe with the twist of piping the mixture into molds.
My Easter eggs in different sizes. The “blue skies” egg at the bottom is one of my favorites.
The process:
1) Filling- with marshmallow mixture made from egg whites, sugar syrup and gelatin. The gelatin I used was silver leaf, as requested in the book. Leaf gelatin vs powdered gelatin dissolves more easily and is less likely to be grainy in the end product. Also, to make sure the eggs are smooth, pipe the batter in slowly making sure to get in every space of the shape of the egg.
2) Unmolding- if you’ve sprayed the molds well they come out very easily.
3) Coating- you can either use colored sanding sugar or a homemade flavored version which there is a recipe for in the book. I want to experiment with the flavored one in the future. It involves using sugar, citric acid and dehydrated fruit powder to create the coating.
4) Serving- I like the way they look in mini muffin liners.
Despite having to do the recipe twice, I really had a lot of fun making these eggs. The couple of things I did wrong were in the marshmallow making process. Here are a couple of tips:
1. After the gelatin sheets have softened in the cold water and you go to melt it on the stove, either keep the flame really low or don’t melt till you’re in the process of preparing the simple syrup. I kept mine on for about 10 minutes and it dried out.
2) When making the sugar syrup, have a pan that is small and deep enough so the thermometer can register the correct temperature. I took the syrup too far so when I added it to the egg whites, the mixture was grainy.
I like the vanilla bean flecks in the eggs but would flavor the marshmallows in the future. The book has recipes for raspberry and lemon. I’d also prefer to eat the eggs coated in powdered sugar. It’s hard because the sanding sugar looks so beautiful but the crunchy texture in contrast to the fluffiness of the marshmallow didn’t work for me. Maybe if I tried a finer sugar it would work better.
Week 17 of the Bouchon Bakery Book Project
Read the Project recap on the Marshmallow Eggs
Bake with us!