Peter Gilmore's Snow Eggs - Issues with poacher meringue and maltose tuilles

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victorhooi

Assistant Cook
Joined
Jun 9, 2006
Messages
5
On the weekend, I was trying to do Peter Gilmore's Snow Egg recipe (except I used lychees and strawberries, instead of guavas, which aren't in season):

Recipe: Peter Gilmore's Snow Egg - RN First Bite - ABC Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
Quay's guava snow egg recipe | Gourmet Traveller recipe - Gourmet Traveller

The two stages I'm having trouble with are the poached mergingue, and the maltose tuilles.

1. Poached Meringues

For the meringues, I used these 6cm hemisphere moulds:

Half Sphere Silicone Baking Mould 60MM - D-003 - Novelty Tins and Pans - Cake Tins and Pans - Cake

I whisked the egg whites, then added in the sugar. I then used a spoon to scoop them into the moulds.

I don't have a baine marie, so I used a Pyrex baking dish, and filled it with 1-2 cm of water (not boiling). The moulds were new so they did curl a bit at the edges - so I wasn't able to get the water up that high, otherwise it'd overflow over the top.

I baked them for 15 minutes at 120C - still not done, so I left them in there for a bit longer.

What I found was that the top rose, and baked (as in, went hard), and then the inside was still mushy/foamy.

Even after nearly an hour - the bottom still hadn't really set at all - it was nearly impossible to get them to come out cleanly.

My partner mentioned possibly pipetting them into the moulds instead of using a spoon - don't know if that was the issue.

Any other suggestions?

2. Maltose Tuilles
Ok, this was a bit of a disaster...lol.

So the maltose was ridiculously hard to pour, possibly should have put in boiling water to soften a bit.

But I got it out, probably a touch more than 200g - maybe 220g.

I heated it in a copper-based pan with the sugar. The Gourmet Traveller recipe said 140 C - I tried to keep it around there - but it went a bit over, possibly to 150-160 C. Added the almonds, then poured out onto some baking paper.

The issue was - it seemed to say quite gooey, even after 30 minutes.

I put it in the freezer for a short period, just to chill it a bit - and that seemed to harden the praline somewhat.

Then I put it into a blender to get the powder. It whizzed through for a few seconds - however, then it seemed to revert back into gooey-ness, and actually seemed to jam up the blender.

So basically, I wasn't able to process it into the fine powder they mention, because the praline wasn't hard.

Any thoughts?

Cheers,
Victor
 
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