ANNABEL LANGBEIN
Removing the angst
Even for the most experienced cooks, baking can be a fraught process. There’s so much chemistry at play between ingredients, ovens, humidity and timing. During the past few weeks I’ve been on a mission to create the perfect meringue. I blame Instagram for this obsession, as everything on Instagram is so damned perfect. Until recently, my meringues were perfect every time, with nary a crack or unattractive weep in sight. But now, for reasons I have yet to fathom, I am unable to produce a batch that isn’t cracked.
I have tried old eggs and new eggs, different kinds of sugar, different cooking temperatures and changed out my tried and true recipe with different ratios of sugar to eggs. I have consulted Delia, Aunt Daisy, the UK Egg Board and numerous websites claiming to offer the secrets to perfect meringues.
I have gone through two or three trays of eggs and several kilograms of sugar in my quest, but, as those of you who have seen my tragic Instagram posts will attest, my meringues have been coming out cracked and even, dare I say it, weeping.
I can tell you that soft meringue of the sort used to top pies and make baked alaska uses about 2 Tbsp of sugar for every egg, while hard meringues that you can shape or pipe need about ¼ cup sugar per egg white and often contain an acidic stabiliser, such as cream of tartar or vinegar, to prevent the meringue from weeping. I can assure you they won’t work if it’s humid, and that you do get more volume when the eggs aren’t fresh.
After all this, I’ve come to the conclusion that the perfect meringue is a hit-and-miss-affair, and actually they taste the same cracked or uncracked. It’s a relief really, as this idea of perfection is unnerving.
I love the idea of ratios to declutter the process of making and remembering a recipe, like the aforementioned meringues, which use ¼ cup sugar per egg white. Cooks and chefs use ratios a lot, as they can carry them around in their heads without needing to refer to a recipe. I remember asking a baker in a bakery in Portland how he made his bread. “Five flour to three water,” was his reply. For scone dough you want three parts flour, 1 part fat and 2 parts liquid. You can make a simple biscuit dough using 1 part sugar, 2 parts fat and 3 parts flour and then flavour it up any way you want. Knowing ratios like this takes the angst out of cooking, and frees you from the tyranny of recipes.
To make things even easier I have devised a fabulous baking mix that’s ready to just add liquid and eggs in various ratios to produce fabulous muffins, cakes, loaves, scones and pancakes. In an exploding world of recipes, which often provide complicated formulas and never-ending ingredient lists, this simple mix delivers a safe haven. It’s a formula you don’t have to think about that offers lots of variations. For me it creates the happiness factor in baking. You can even take it to the bach, readymade in a jar, and you know you’ll have success without even thinking.