Hot take: People are way too scared of folding in egg whites

I was helping out at my friend's bakery pop-up in Portland last weekend, and I watched three different people completely deflate their meringue. They were treating it like they were mixing concrete, using these fast, hard strokes. It made me think of trying to get a class of seventh graders to be quiet, you have to be gentle. The key is to use a big rubber spatula and fold from the bottom up in a slow 'J' shape. I did a test with two batches of the same chiffon cake recipe, one with rough mixing and one with proper folding. The rough one came out dense and sad, like a pancake. The proper one had that perfect, airy spring. Has anyone else found a specific technique that people always seem to mess up?

3 comments

3 Comments

amy531mo ago

Oh man, that visual of mixing concrete is SPOT ON. Watching someone wreck all that work is just painful, like you can almost hear the air sighing out. It really is about being gentle, like you're handling something fragile.

felix47821d ago

Yeah it's like we forget that gentle works better for a lot of things. You see it when someone scrubs a non-stick pan with steel wool, or yanks a USB cord out sideways instead of pulling it straight. It's this rush to force it that wrecks the good result. There's a quiet skill in not using all your strength.

alicel101mo ago

Is it just me or does watching someone wreck a meringue feel like a horror movie? I mean, you see the spatula start going in like a power tool and you just want to yell "no, stop!" I had a roommate who would basically beat the egg whites into submission, and every time her cakes came out like doorstops. It's not that hard, just be nice to it.