Knowing how to save a disaster

This morning I baked these meringues to bring to a birthday celebration later today.

Meringues are super easy to make. The basic proportions are  1/4 cup sugar to each egg-white. You can then get cute with the additions.

 

 

I had lots of  chocolate covered blueberries and raisins left over from the kiddush we had made in honor of our son. I thought that adding the chopped up chocolate and fruit would be a nice addition.  I also added a tablespoon of potato starch to the mixture  for a bit of structure and a pinch of salt both to assist the egg-whites in achieving maximum fluff as well as to keep the sugar from being cloying.  Since the birthday girl has sophisticated tastes I decided to add  orange and hazelnut flavoring to the meringues. Despite it being a muggy day, the egg whites  beat up spectacularly.

Then, I added the flavorings. As soon as I did the egg-whites deflated. It took me a minute to understand why.  The flavor extracts I was adding were in an oil base, rather than in an alcohol base. Oil and egg-whites are not friends.

 

I decided to bake the now sloppy egg-whites in candy papers to contain the potential mess. The save worked. These meringues while not lofty, look adorable. Whew!!! The birthday girl is a woman who cares deeply about presentation. You can’t give her ugly but delicious cookies, you just can’t.

 

I’m dealing with the very same issue with Danielle's chuppah.  I had forgotten to take something into consideration. I could have just thrown my hands up and chalked it up to failure. My my other alternative was to think through a solution…which I did. I will post about both  my bit of bone headed thinking and my solution later in the week.