The Secret Recipes cookbook is full of amazing recipes and insights into Dominique Ansel's creativity. It's Good Friday, so the first recipe that I would like to share my experience baking is Marshmallow Chicks.
The first step is preparing the egg shells. The recipe calls for a total time frame of two hours to complete, it took me two hours to finish this first step 🙄. I read about different ways to cut egg shells and ordered a egg shell cracker to remove the tops. It did a great job of "cracking" the eggs. I went through thirty eggs to end up with fourteen eggs shells that could be used. Apparently, the egg cracker that I used is for hard boiled eggs. Maybe another tool would have worked better?
Next, you remove the membrane from inside the egg shell. This recipe says to "carefully peel away" the membrane. This sounds simpler that it was, in my experience. I tried using tweezers and the back side of a curved pairing knife and struggled to remove the membrane. The membrane would tear and I could not get it to "peel" off as described. After removing the membrane, you place the shells in boiling water and let them simmer for a minute. I noticed that their were pieces of membrane still left in the shell. At this point, the remaining membrane was easily peeled off. I then re-boiled the shells and let them dry.
When I try the recipe again, I will soak the shells in hot water before attempting to remove the membrane. I think that would help separate the membrane from the shell making it easier to remove.
The next step is making soft caramel. This was very straight forward and resulted in a soft, rich caramel that was delicious.
The marshmallow recipe calls for combining granulated sugar, corn syrup, honey, and water and bringing it to a boil. This is cooked until the syrup reaches 248 degrees F. The syrup is poured into a stand mixer, add bloomed gelatin, and let it cool for five minutes before whisking. Maybe my house was too cold, but the syrup hardened and I was unable to whisk it. I hurriedly boiled water in a medium pot and placed the mixing bowl over it. This allowed the syrup-gelatin mixture to soften. The bowl was transferred back to the mixer and I was able to whisk the mixture to complete the marshmallows.
I think I should have slowly whisked the mixture while it was cooling. This would have kept it from hardening before whisking on medium-high speed.
Assembling the chicks went very smoothly. You have to work quickly during this step, piping the warm marshmallow into the egg shell. Add a dollop of caramel, and filling the remainder of the shell with the marshmallow.
Once the shell is filled, you hold the tip of the piping bag one inch above the egg and pipe a teardrop pulling the bag away quickly to form a beak for the chick.
Immediately, sprinkle with yellow sugar to cover the marshmallow. The recipe calls for sanding sugar, I had yellow sugar crystals on hand that I used instead. Also, you can melt chocolate and use a piping bag to create eyes for the chicks. I ran out of time and had to skip this step.
The completed Marshmallow Chicks. Will this be a new Easter tradition in my house, only time will tell.
Happy Easter!
Comments