Scrambled Eggs

Today we learned what happens when you leave the pot full of eggs on the double boiler for just a little bit too long...as the title suggests, scrambled eggs. It wasn't the end of the world but it did make for a bit of a cleaning and measuring rush! Unfortunately, the scrambled eggs were only one of our problems today as we also had meringue cookies that tasted vaguely like chlorine. Now, before y'all go and ask 'what did you do to them', every group's meringues tasted like that, not just ours. Our chef was very, very disturbed by the taste and talked to four other chef-instructors but for the life of us all, we couldn't figure out why they had such a funky taste. It was especially puzzling to us because we made two bunches of meringues and the other failed to taste like any form of Clorox product. Very weird. Very puzzling.

Enough with the problems from Egg Day Numero Two, there were good things that happened too. One, I hand whipped whipping cream which felt awesome and our group made verra, verra tasty chocolate mousse. However, before we worked on the mousse, we worked with two different types of meringues. The first type, which is referred to as the French method is created by whipping egg whites and a pinch of salt until they are nice and soft peak-y and then gradually adding white sugar into the mix and continue mixing until the meringue gets nice and fluffy and shiny and perfectly lovely. We made the meringue cookies with the French meringue and then moved onto Swiss meringues. Swiss meringue is much stabler than French because when you make this kind of meringue you are actually dissolving the sugar into the egg whites when you are beating them together over a double broiler. After the mixture get hot to the touch, you can pop the bowl into the mixer and continue to whip the meringue until it is cool to the touch. Then, you can do a whole bunch o' things with Swiss meringue: you can make butter cream if you whip in butter; you can make stencils;
put it on top of tarts; or you can just make plain old cookies.


One of the perfectly adorable meringues that tasted terrible but looked tasty. Plus note, if you see an imperfection in the meringue, it is from my cat Gus who got on the counter and tried to eat it...

The last thing we made was chocolate mousse; which is where the egg scrambling came in... When we made the mousse, the first thing we did was melt chocolate and butter together over a double boiler. Then, we took the egg yolks, sugar and grand marnier and we whisked and heated them over a double boiler until they were thick and frothy and then we let them cool so you could mix everything together, without scrambling another batch... While we waited, I whipped the cream and by that time the chocolate and eggs cool enough that they could be mixed together and then the whipped cream could be folded into the chocolate mixture -- slowly and gently so as to not deflate the light airy mousse. The mousse was so delightfully delicious that I can't even describe it but if you come to New York (not an open invitation though y'all...small apartment...) I will probably still have some in the freezer...


Crazy delicious chocolate mousse