Pomegranate Winter Chiffon Meringue Pie

I was wondering what the chiffon referred to in Rose's Pomegranate Winter Chiffon Meringue Pie but realised (as I was eating a piece) it's the mousse filling. Always such fancy names. 

To be honest, if I had seen this recipe without the benefit of a bake-through group, I doubt I would have considered making it. To my mind, a meringue pie crust is an odd concept, and filling it with mousse straight out eccentricity.

However, I would have been completely wrong. This is a really surprising (for me and those of my ilk) flavour and design winner. The meringue swirls at the rim of the pie (see The Baking Bible for a photo of a properly executed version) are a clever and pretty way to show off the pink mousse filling. The pomegranate flavoured filling is a really lovely, fresh flavour that goes well with the sweet meringue. Rose always uses lemon so effectively and the little teaspoon of lemon juice to the filling makes all the difference. 

Of course, that's the theory and then there's my execution. It was pretty disastrous despite the picture of apparent success below*. 

*Apologies for the photos which make it look like I live in a cave. I don't. I think it's time to invest in some lighting doodad.

This is my attempt to follow Roses's instructions (on her blog) about the best way to grease the pie dish to allow the meringue crust to release. It's not the picture of evenly sieved cornflour that I envisioned (you can't but admire the scratchings where I tried to redistribute the thick piles of cornflour). Even so, it might have worked if other things hadn't gone wrong...

A vision of loveliness... Even the blobby piping around the rim wasn't too bad (yes, that's right, I piped). I forgot about the heat and its effect on the meringue, so the definition from the star shape is not great.

The real issue I had with the meringue crust was in the baking. It may have been a bit marshmallowy when I took it out of the oven, when it should have been dry right the way through. This wouldn't have been a big problem if I hadn't had to leave it in the fridge an extra day before filling it with the mousse. Unfortunately after a day and a half in the fridge it kept leaking fluid into the bottom of the pie dish. I could see the tide rising through the glass pie dish. But having started I thought I'd keep going and make the mousse. What else could go wrong...?

The mousse, like the meringue, was a pretty straightforward concoction of flavouring (pomegranate juice), structure and volume (more meringuey egg whites beaten with sugar) and airiness (whipped cream). Not difficult. However. I ran out of sugar and had to use a mix of demerera and icing sugar. The juice and gelatin was cold but not set at all when I was ready to mix it with the whipped cream and the meringue. Hmmm. What to do? No time or energy to wait. I decided to mix the juice into the whipped cream. Hmmm, juicy blobs. I'll just have to whisk it with the hand mixer. Creamy juice, no air. Hmmm. I'll just fold the meringue and creamy juice together. Creamy juicy blobs. More whisking. Creamy, meringuey juice. Great. Perfect. I poured it into the dodgy meringue crust and carefully placed it into the fridge. It would have been merciful if I'd tripped and dropped it on the floor but the gods of clumsiness were not feeling kind.

All bakers know that sinking feeling where you've 'finished' but you know things are not as they should be. That was my experience, and it was confirmed when I cut the pie this morning to find a nice mousse layer on top of a marshmallow layer, under which ran a stream of pinky, gelatiny liquid. I know a few of our projects have looked like an accident scene but this one looked like a science experiment. The taste (of the first two layers), despite everything, was lovely and light and fresh. I didn't take it to work and I don't have any chickens or squirrels so this one might have to go to the big fridge in the sky.

If I was to compose this type of dessert myself, instead of a meringue crust, I might try two or three meringue discs pasted together with the mousse. It would avoid all the issues with the pie crust, although I'm sure 'me and my ilk' could find some other issues...

Next week the Alpha Bakers are making White Chocolate Cupcakes with Raspberry Mousseline.

Lemon Icebox Cake

The trick to making this recipe is not to read ahead. Or, if you accidentally glance across, to immediately forget what you saw and concentrate on the particular task at hand. In fact it's a lot like renovating; a topic which is particularly relevant to my life at the moment. Renos, as we like to call them in this part of the world (you need to say the word with a bit of a twang and elongate the 'o' as in 'owe'z'), in my experience, can only be coped with by compartmentalising. If you thought about it all at once then you'd never start.

Of course, if you're an Alpha Baker and/or baking the cake because you promised it for a fundraising event, then you really do have to start. And so I did, with a bit of adjustment (I just couldn't face the sugar syrup part of the Italian meringue).

My version of the Lemon Icebox Cake in the photo below doesn't look too bad if you overlook the twee decorations (my five year old self popping out again for a bit of decorating). And it was delicious, and surprisingly light and refreshing, particularly given the enormous number of eggs and oodles of cream. Unfortunately the angel food cake part of it failed badly, although I did manage to resurrect enough to construct a finished product. Luckily the lemon curd cream held it all together.

*That crack in the top really annoys me. If I'd had any icing sugar on me at the time I would have dusted over it.

Cue elevator music...lulling the cook and her readers into a false sense of calm.

There are quite a few steps to making the lemon curd meringue cream and one of them involves making Italian meringue by drizzling hot sugar syrup into beaten egg whites. Somehow that seemed too much, so after a bit of research I decided just to make a plain meringue mixture by adding sugar to the beaten eggs.

The first step, however, was to make the lemon curd. It was a very easy method to make curd. All it needed was a little patience while stirring the mixture to thicken. I love, love, love the colour the curd comes out and this time I managed to catch it properly with the camera.

The next day, before I made the angel food cake, I folded whipped cream into the curd. The mixture was absolutely delicious. You could just serve it with spoons.

Then, the ill-fated angel food cake. There was nothing particularly difficult in the making of it. It has an extraordinary amount of egg whites in it. The recipe specifies 16! Yes, that's right, I said 16! I used the weight given in the recipe and it only turned out to be 13 egg whites. I'm wondering if that contributed to my problems with this cake?

The recipe has us add two teaspoons of cream of tartar to the beaten egg whites which I was doubtful about but put in anyway.  The taste of the eggs was pretty awful with that much cream of tartar until I added the lemon juice and vanilla. I think it's meant to make the cake white, which to my eyes looks strange anyway, so I won't be adding that much again.

You can see the cake was very cracked when it came out of the oven. The skewer came out clean so I thought it was done.

O!, *&%@!?#$#!*"!

The last sentence is written in a language known only to cooks. It is impossible to translate it directly to English. But you get the gist.

For those not familiar with making angel food cake, it needs be suspended upside down in the baking tin to cool. The tin has a hole in the middle which allows you to balance it on a bottle with a thin neck. It's a bit nerve-wracking turning a hot cake upside-down but up until now I haven't had one fall out. 

You may be mystified by the bottles under the cake but they were stabilising the bottle I used to elevate the cake tin. Stability of the bottle turned out to be the least of my problems. Stupid cake.

The recipe requires two slices of the cake to be cut crosswise. I managed to cut two thin circles off the cake by some miracle (it collapsed even more than the photo above shows). I'll spare you the photo of the rest of the cake. Lucky the recipe called for it to be broken into little pieces which wasn't a long way from where it was already.

Lucky there was miracle glue in the form of lemon curd cream. Just before putting it all together I folded egg whites* beaten with sugar to make a plain meringue, into the lemon curd cream mixture. I'm not that fond of a jellied texture in cakes and desserts but I could see that I would need something to hold this together, particularly in the hot weather here. So I added a leaf of gelatin (I prefer leaf gelatin because I think it gives a softer hold) and then I panicked and added another one. The texture of the final dessert wasn't at all jelly-like so one thing worked out well, at least.

*Uhuh, more egg whites.

This coming week we're making Pecan Praline Scheherazades.

Posh Pie (it's chocolate)

I missed out on making the Baking Bible's Posh Pie with the Alpha Bakers last year. I wanted to try and catch up since it looked luscious and of course chocolatey. The Posh Pie is a chocolate tart with a biscuit crumb base, chocolate mousse filling and shiny cocoa glaze.

My pie didn't turn out looking all that posh but it certainly was shiny. A bit of bling can fix anything. The pie was very nice but I think I need to make it again to tweak a few things and get it right. It also took quite a lot of time and energy. I'm not sure this pie was, but maybe posh pie 2.0 would be worth it.

The biscuits. It's kind of unbelievable that anyone would be masochistic enough to make biscuits just to grind them into crumbs. But that's what I did. This could be my first and only time and not just because it goes against the grain to crush biscuits you've sweated over. I also found this biscuit dough quite difficult to deal with. It was very sticky and melted after very little time out of the fridge. I think I'd probably choose an easier chocolate butter biscuit if I did it again.

I thought I might have packed the biscuit crumb in too hard by the time I finished but it was so crumbly it seemed to be the only way to compact it. Next time I might cook the biscuits a little less so they're softer and thus make softer crumbs. Or just buy some nice chocolate biscuits.

I love this type of mousse-like filling, and prefer it to buttercream filling for cakes. It's rich but not as sweet generally. I'm not a fan of using gelatin usually but if you're not serving the cake or tart immediately (or you live in a hot climate) you probably do need to use it. I might try a bit less next time or use leaf gelatin which I think gives a softer, less jelly-like finish. 

I don't have any photos of making the glaze because it was late by the time I got to that point. It was easy to mix up and poured on with no trouble.

I took this tart to work. It was very difficult to get the base out of the bowl. By the time a few pieces had been hacked off for hungry workmates the tart looked a bit messy. Most seemed to like it although no one raved. One person said it was too rich. He's never getting another piece of cake.

I'm making the Pink Pearl Lady Cake this weekend which means I'm making fondant icing. This is something I'd never bother to try otherwise, but being part of the Alpha Baker's is all about trying out new things...and then complaining when they don't work out.