Posts from the ‘Cupcakes’ Category

Julia Child’s Birthday & Lemon Meringue Pie Day

“I think every woman should have a blowtorch.”
― Julia Child

Happy 100th Birthday Julia Child! It’s not only your birthday but National Lemon Meringue Pie day and so I made some hybrid cupcakes and put that blowtorch to good use in your honor. Well your honor and my stomach’s insistence that I feed it something using the 4 pints of meyer lemon curd I made recently ;-)

With it being lemon meringue pie day I hope you’ll find these cupcakes an acceptable stand in. I do have an older post that contains the more traditional pie recipe. It was delicious even if the meringue did separate a bit from the pie itself. A common problem actually. See meringue is well, it’s tricky. It’s a foam that is constantly trying to undo itself and has a tendency to terrify experienced and amateur chefs alike. I certainly got a bit aggravated with how mine turned out on these cupcakes because I over whipped the stuff and knew it wasn’t going to spread in the creamy manner I’d managed with that ol’ pie recipe. Still I soldiered ahead with my blow torch.

“Upon reflection, I decided I had three main weaknesses: I was confused (evidenced by a lack of facts, an inability to coordinate my thoughts, and an inability to verbalize my ideas); I had a lack of confidence, which cause me to back down from forcefully stated positions; and I was overly emotional at the expense of careful, ‘scientific’ thought. I was thirty-seven years old and still discovering who I was.”
― Julia Child, My Life in France

Meringue at its most basic level is a whipped egg white. That’s it. There are a number of additives and I’ll get to those in a minute, but essentially the first meringues came out of the mid-17th century with the invention of straw whisks. Anytime I think I’m challenged, I remind myself that the person who first found this didn’t have the benefit of a kitchen aid and I shut up for a moment at least. Straw?! When you consider that what you are doing is taking water and and separating it into bubbles by displaying it with air and a thin strand of protein…that’s kind of miraculous on a molecular level. The proteins in egg whites get thinned out into the most tendril like strands as you whip them; physical agitation causes them to unfold. As the proteins unfold you expose their hydrophilic and hydrophobic ends water present in the egg whites and air. As the proteins rebond to one another, the hydrophobic (repelled by water) ends will want to bond together and capture pockets of air as they so creating bubbles and as bubbles accumulate, you get foam. Unfortunately these bubbles can’t last forever. The protein structure eventually collapses due to weight of the water and tightening of protein bonds causing water “seepage”. It’s up to the kitchen warrior to find a way to combat these pressures to keep that precious foam aloft.

What are the tricks to keeping your meringue from falling apart?

1. Heat. When you cook your meringue you get extra support from a protein called ovalbumin. This is the strongest protein present in egg whites but it remains unphased by whisking. Heat is the only way to get it to unfold and restructure. Keep in mind that overheating causes the proteins to tighten together even stronger which squeezes out water from your droplets and creates seepage into air pockets causing deflation. Wah wah wah.
2. Thickeners: agents like sugar, flour, gelatin can all be added into the egg whites to provide extra backbone structure for the air bubbles. Unfortunately they can also work against you if the ratio is off and they inhibit the same height your foam would get as unadulterated egg white. Sugar is the ingredient you’ll add most often, especially for meringue, because it lends a crispness and you need sugar in conjunction with protein and heat to get that caramelized flavor that only comes from a Maillard Reaction. Sugar reduces how quickly you can form foam and lowers the volume you can achieve because it interferes with the proteins. On the other hand it will thicken your meringue and slow down evaporation of water during the baking process. Why would you want to keep the water around longer? It helps provide structure upon which the protein lattice over you ovalbumins can harden. Powdered and super fine sugar is best as granulated sugar will leave your mixture kind of grainy since it doesn’t completely dissolve in water
3. Copper Bowls: did your mother ever tell you to use a copper bowl when you bake meringue? Well there’s a reason for that! Proteins have 4 levels of structure. The first two are comprised of amino acids and hydrogen bonding between them.  Think of it like a string of beads.  Once you hit the third level, this string starts to fold over on itself, twist and compact into a tight ball.  Each bead could be thought of as slightly magenetic so they all stick together in a jumbled mess.  This globule is formed by sulfur to sulfur bonds. The fourth level is where individual “globs” bind to other “globs” also in part from sulfur-sulfur bonding. As I said before, when proteins bind too tightly to themselves it squeezes out the water.  Your goal is to unwind the original protein globs and then encourage them to reform in a looser structure that captures pockets of air and water.  If they compact tightly then you just wind up with a mess of protein and no bubbles!  Copper interferes with these sulfur bonds.*****Interesting side note: your hair texture, which is composed of a protein called keratin, is determined by these same sulfur bonds. Chemical treatments like perms use substances like ammonium thioglycolate to disrupt the sulfur bonds and then additional chemicals are used to restructure the hair as desired. Just throwing that out there for any Elle Woods fans
4. Acids: copper bowls are EXPENSIVE. A great alternative to use to disrupt disulfide bridges are acids. Free hydrogen will bond to exposed sulfur and reduce the number bonds that form. A pinch of cream of tartar or some lemon juice does the trick nicely.
5. Finally the style of beating itself is important. You want to operate on a Hypocycloidal style i.e. a beater rotating on its head that also moves around the bowl. Think of it like how a planet both rotates on its own axis AND on route around the sun.Most stand mixers do this for you. Sadly unless you are a double jointed circus performer, it is much harder to achieve this effect by hand.

“The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you’ve got to have a what-the-hell attitude.”
― Julia Child

This post got long awfully fast! I have much more meringue advice to give but I suppose I’ll save that for another day. Ultimately though take a lesson from Julia here and just go for it with gusto. You’re gonna get seepage, over mix, deflate…it’s all going to happen at some point or another due to a stupid mistake or bad kitchen conditions. I knew once I ran my blowtorch over the too-clumpy meringue, it would be less noticeable. They aren’t as pretty as I like and I hesitated sharing because as I blogged earlier in the week, I’m a perfectionist to my core. Still I think for Julia I can manage to embarrass myself a little.

Happy Birthday Julia Child! I hope they’ve got pie in heaven’s skies today for you. (Please note :I am 100% agnostic and not insinuating I actually believe in heaven. It’s just a nice thought of the great French Chef standing over me. End of Disclaimer)

Lemon Meringue Cupcakes Read more