Friday, October 31, 2008

BakeSpace Challenge #8 - Spooky Recipe

The Mission: Make creepy food fitting with the Halloween Season

Solution: Mummy Meringues

I decided I wanted to serve Phantasmal Phalanges, but there are MANY finger shaped cookies (Lady Fingers, Viennese fingers… etc) out there, so it had to be different. Spooky… Odd… and Slightly disgusting. I got the idea from seeing little smokies wrapped with strips of flour tortilla to look like mummy fingers…
I happily plagiarized the idea, but in keeping with the general nature of mummies, being all dehydrated to the point of crumbling to dust with over handling… I decided to make a dessert utilizing a baked meringue to get a mummy finger texture I would be happy with.
A little black food coloring to “Grey” up the egg whites and a broken sliced almond for a fingernail and Voila …!!!!
Mummy meringues for your mandible munching madness.


Mummy Meringues

Special equipment - 2 Pastry bags; small rose petal tip; large round tip (Writing)
3 large egg whites
pinch of salt
1/4 tsp cream of tarter
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract
1/4 tsp Almond Extract
Black Gel Coloring
sliced almonds

Preheat oven to 200 degrees

Whip Egg whites with salt on low speed until foamy.
Sprinkle Cream of Tarter over the foam and continue to whip at medium speed.
Once soft peaks are achieved, begin sprinkling the sugar over the forming meringue and continuing to whip. Once the peaks are really stiff and glossy, remove about 1/3 cup and place in the pastry bag fitted with teh rose petal tip.
Mix extracts with a little black food coloring and fold into the remaining meringue.
Line baking sheets with parchment and fill a piping bag with a large round tip.
Pipe 3 1/2 inch stripes of grey meringue onto the parchment paper. (Don't worry about them being completely straight and even... It makes them more creepy)
Place an almond slice on one end of each strip for a fingernail. (I placed the almond where I made the Curly-queue as I drew the bag up to cover the little peak)
Wet finger and smooth the meringues where necessary.
Pipe "gauze bandages" over opposite end of the meringue finger with the "white" meringue.

Bake at 200 for 1 hour.
Turn oven off and let the meringues continue drying in the warm oven for another hour.
Serve on a pile of chocolate cookie crumbs to resemble dirt if you like.

‘Bone’ Appetit MUAH HA HA HA HA HA
~~

2 comments:

Spryte said...

Those look so cool!!!!

Bob said...

Ha! That's awesome. Good job, man.