Thursday, March 01, 2007

Brown Sugar Meringues

brownsugarmeringue

Yesterday's cake was my first attempt at sugarpaste-covered cake. It was a lot easier than I had expected - a nice surprise there! It was also the first trial cake for a close friend's wedding in May. I've promised to make her cake, and we're slowly figuring out the details. This cake had chocolate layers, and a mixture of crème fraîche and cream cheese beaten stiff with homemade strawberry preserves in between. I used a raspberry buttercream (from the Cake Bible) to cover it all (and that was just excellent by the way - extremely tasty, and simple to make) and then sugarpaste on top. I went slightly crazy with the icing - see, I just won a set of Wilton decorating tips on Ebay, and I wanted to try them out. Piping icing is *fun*!

The actual wedding cakes will be quite simple - all white, with a border of stars or flowers at the very bottom, and then fresh, dark red roses to decorate. Possibly the odd icing design too, to cover any mistakes in the sugarpaste. The cake will be chocolate and raspberry - I'm thinking a dark chocolate ganache for one layer, and a strongly flavored raspberry mousse. Will have to experiment further!

Anyway. While on the subject of piping, I have to point out these lovely brown sugar meringues that I made a week or so ago. So simple - I used four egg whites and about 60 g of brown sugar per egg white (a total of 240 g). Just beat the egg whites until they start to thicken, and gradually add the sugar until you have a very glossy and stiff mixture. Pipe it out (or just dollop out with spoons) and bake in a fairly cool oven (130°C) for about an hour. Turn the oven off, and leave them to dry for at least an hour, or more. (Overnight is fine.)

11 comments:

Jessica said...

Det är överraskande hur snyggt man kan få saker att bli.
Här har de mängder med grejer för att dekorera tårtor om du behöver något mer. Jag var naturligtvis "tvungen" att beställa ätbart glitter ;).
http://www.dekoreramera.se/catalog/index.php

dorothee said...

I made my sister's wedding cake a few years ago, and I candied roses to put on the cake (I used fresh roses, too). If the roses are organic, you can also eat them - candied or not, I believe.

Anonymous said...

Hi Anne, the meringues look great, and sound easy too! And your cake looks excellent - great job! I agree, piping IS fun!

Anonymous said...

Anne:
Are you making a tiered wedding cake(flera våningar)?

Jessika:
Vilken sajt (what a site, (dekoreramera.se):

New words like
tyll (decorating tip?), ätbart lim (edible glue)!

Tack för den,

A-K

Anne said...

A-K - no, not tiered, thankfully :)

Jessika - jaa, de har massor av fina saker! www.kakburken.se är bra också :)

Jocelyn:McAuliflower said...

What a wonderful subtle variation for a meringue! I've never made them with brown sugar before.

Your cake flavors have me drooling!

Jessica said...

Better do this in English for all to read. Was suffering from a bad spell of intermittent loss of words which created holes in between... I have ordered from both kakburken.se and dekoreramera. In terms of stock and service, I prefer the latter.

Anonymous said...

I'm a huge meringue fan but had a catastrophe last time I tried to make them. Maybe I should stick to something simple and try this one over the weekend. (I love brown sugar ... I used to eat it by the spoonful as a kid.)

cell said...

Where are the photos of the wedding cake you made? my wedding's in sept and im looking for wedding cake recipes that are simple enough for a non professional to make. =) btw i love your blog and read it regularly.

Anne said...

Cell - here it is. And the recipe I used is here. Best of luck on your wedding, I'm sure it will be wonderful :)

Anonymous said...

what a beautiful meringues. Its look really tasty.