Hazelnut dacquoise

I made this hazelnut dacquoise to go into a fancy cake. These two layers were sandwiched into the middle of a vanilla cake, layered with a cooked vanilla frosting. (I think a mousse would be better, but this cake was for a frosting-lover.)

I used my recipe for meringue, and added some ground hazelnuts. (I was inspired by this recipe for peanut dacquoise.) I think I might've overbaked them a bit -- next time I might do closer to an hour rather than an hour and a half. In the finished cake, the dacquoise tasted fantastic and added a really interesting texture. It didn't soften as much as I expected -- this is where I think that baking for a shorter time might help. Anyway, overall the verdict was: delicious!

UPDATE: Bake for 1.5 hours, then turn off the oven and leave them in there until completely cool / overnight. After being in the oven overnight, they had started to soften slightly. Once in the cake, layered with frosting/mousse, they softened completely. Perfect!

Dacquoise:

120 g water
100 g caster sugar
pinch of cream of tartar
vanilla
2.3 g versawhip 600k
1 g xanthan gum
1.2 g agar powder
1 cup hazelnut meal

1. Mix everything but the vanilla and hazelnut in a pot and bring to the boil. (I seem to remember some problems with clumping, so hit it with the stick blender if need be.)
2. After it's boiled for a little bit (activating the agar), take it off the heat and add vanilla.
3. Whip the mixture (using a stand mixer) until you have a thick foam. It should form a large blob on the whisk when you lift the mixer head.
4. Fold in the hazelnut.
5. Draw circles the diameter of your cake on parchment paper, and split the dacquoise mixture accordingly. I was making a small cake (about 18cm/7 inch), and made two circles. The dacquoise spreads out as it cooks -- you end up trimming them to get them back to the right size.
6. Bake at 130 C (275 F) for at least an hour. When they are done, they should have taken on some colour, and will be dry to the touch but still soft. [UPDATE: Bake for 1.5 hours, then leave to cool in the turned-off oven.]
7. Let them cool. Trim to the appropriate size. Eat all the offcuts.
8. Layer into your cake with frosting/cream/mousse. Let it sit for a while before you serve -- the idea is that the frosting softens the dacquoise a bit, making it deliciously chewy.

Lemon meringue pie, again

I love experiments where you can eat the data.

 

I've almost perfected my meringue recipe from last time.

This is a small batch: it made enough to cover 3 ramekins. I think if you double it it would be enough for a pie.

60 g water
50 g caster sugar
pinch of cream of tartar
vanilla
1 g versawhip 600k
0.5 g xanthan gum
0.6 g agar powder

1. Mix the water, sugar and agar in a small pot and bring to the boil.
2. Put the cream of tartar, versawhip and xanthan in the bowl of a stand mixer. Add the agar mixture and whip with the whisk attachment. Add a little bit of vanilla extract.
3. Whip the mixture until you have a thick foam. When you lift the mixer head, the whisk should have a big blob of meringue in it. It should be thick enough to just stick there, not dripping off.
4. (You could put it on your pie at this point, but here's what I did.) Cover a baking tray with parchment paper, then make meringue circles the right diameter for the ramekins. Put the tray under the grill for a minute or two, watching closely because they brown fast.
5. Put the browned meringues in the fridge or the freezer. If you serve them straight out of the freezer the foam is slightly firmer, and I find the cooler temperature pleasant. Out of the fridge they are perfectly acceptable, just slightly less firm.
6. Place the chilled meringue on top of your lemon pie (or ramekin) to serve.

Note: I bet it would work if you put all of the ingredients into the pot in step 1.

Vegan lemon meringue pie

Here's how you make a meringue that doesn't set:

I based it on my pavlova recipe, but used water instead of flax goop. In the pavlova recipe, I think the baking step provides the heat necessary to activate the agar, but I didn't plan to bake this meringue, only run it under the grill to brown, so I whipped half the water with the versawhip and sugar, and heated the other half in a pot with the agar (using twice as much agar as in the pavlova recipe). I then poured the agar mixture into the versawhip mixture and kept whipping. I ended up having to add more versawhip because it was taking forever to whip up properly. The agar left a few little lumps in the meringue, I guess because it solidified when it hit the room temperature versawhip mixture.

 I put the meringue on the pie, ran it under the grill, and it browned charmingly and the surface firmed up. Overall, the meringue layer was way too soft. It was runny rather than marshmallowy. Tasted good though. I guess the agar didn't do much work at all. It might have helped to use warm water in the versawhip mixture, and then leave the meringue to cool down and firm before grilling/serving.

Here's how you make a meringue that sets:

Take the pie you made in the first version. Freeze it. And voila!

The pastry wasn't that good frozen. So in future I might make a meringue disk, brown it, freeze it, and then place on the lemon tart to serve. It was the perfect texture.

Pavlova experiment

The first time I made a vegan pavlova, I was winging it, so I decided to do an experiment and refine my recipe. Here's the best version I have come up with so far:

100g flax seed goop
100g sugar
pinch of cream of tartar
2g versawhip 600k
1g xanthan gum (this was an accidental increase from the first time; I think 0.5g works too)
0.6g agar powder

1. Whip up the flax seed goop in a stand mixer with a whisk attachment. Whip it until it is very frothy.

2. Mix the rest of the ingredients into the sugar.
3. With the mixer running, add the sugar mixture a bit at a time. Keep whipping until you have a very stiff foam.

4. Scoop the foam out onto a parchment paper covered baking sheet. Form it into a circle about 8 centimetres tall, with the centre slightly lower than the edges.
5. Bake at 100 C for 1 hour, then turn the oven off and leave the pavlova in there (with the door closed) to cool completely. I would say at least 4 hours. (I typically leave it overnight.) After it's cool, you can store it in an airtight container -- mine have been fine 2 days later, but I haven't tried leaving them longer than that.
6. Decorate with non-dairy whipped cream (e.g. whipped coconut cream) and fruit.

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Some notes:

• For my first (unsuccessful) attempt at a simple flax seed meringue, I made the flax seed goop by simmering it for 20 minutes. There was a lot more than Miyoko's recipe said there would be, so I assumed that I had undercooked it. For my second attempt, I simmered it for 40 minutes. I ended up with 2/3 of a cup (the recipe said about 1/2 cup). Both versions worked fine. The version with the longer cooking time got a bit brown on the bottom of the saucepan, and this flavour carried over slightly into the finished pavlova. It was tasty, but not really authentic, so I would try to avoid it in future.
• Other people (Miyoko, various people on the PPK) have been able to make fluffy meringue using just flax seed goop, sugar and cream of tartar. I have tried twice now, and haven't got it to work. My best attempt was this very weak foam:

• It's possible that if you can make a good meringue with just flax seed, sugar and cream of tartar, then you might be able to make a pavlova by adding xanthan and/or agar. But I think I am officially giving up on that goal -- I like my results with versawhip.
• I tried a version of the pavlova with 100g water instead of the flax seed goop -- so with versawhip as the only whipping agent. The flaxless pavlova had a nice crisp outer shell, but the inside was quite insubstantial. The one with flax had a more marshmallowy inside.

Flax + versawhip:

Versawhip only:

Pavlova

I can't believe this worked.

It's a vegan meringue topped with coconut whipped cream and berries. The meringue had the texture contrast you want for pavlova: crisp on the outside and marshmallowy on the inside. 

On the PPK, everyone was having lots of success with flaxseed meringue. I gave it a go, but it didn't work out for me. I think I might not have cooked the flax goop down enough. When I whipped it, it did increase in volume somewhat, and got sort of frothy, but not enough. I added the sugar even though I was doubtful it would work, and nothing much happened.

To the 100g flaxseed goop, 100g sugar, and pinch of cream of tartar of the original recipe, I decided to add another more high-tech whipping agent: Versawhip 600K, along with some xanthan gum. (I used 2 grams of versawhip and .5 gram of xanthan.) And, presto, it whipped up beautifully.

I decided to try making pavlova style meringue. I remembered that some people (Mr Nice Guy Cupcakes, I believe) have had success using agar for marshmallow-style meringue (like the topping on lemon meringue pie), so I added some (I think about 1/3 teaspoon of agar powder). If I remember the Mr Nice Guy recipe correctly, the idea was that the agar would activate during the baking step.

I baked the meringue for 30 minutes at 100C, and then as customary for pavlova, left it in the turned off oven to cool. When it was cool, I tried some, and found that at the very centre it was still somewhat liquid. So I baked them again for 30 minutes, and then let them cool down in the oven overnight. Next morning they were perfect.