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I recently made macaroons for the first time and followed the instructions to the T and they were perfect! The recipe called for exactly 90 grams of egg whites..

I then made them again but the egg whites i used added up to slightly over 90 grams (about 3 grams over) - i tried to remove the extra 3 grams with a spoon but nothing has ever been so difficult! They are just a mass of goo which is so hard to separate.. whenever i got any on the spoon it just slipped off again! so in the end i just gave up and obviously the macaroons were ruined!!

So my question is - is there a method of getting precise measurements of egg whites? something i could add to make them less gloopy so i can remove the excess with a spoon? How do people normally do this?

alice
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    Baking recipes can be pretty sensitive to measurements, but I honestly don't think that 3 grams would make that kind of a difference. If the recipe flopped with 93 g instead of 90 g then it was probably more likely due to the age of the eggs or other factors. – Aaronut May 12 '11 at 21:19
  • i think probably it was the amount of food colouring i put in (loads) because i wanted them to be bright pink - but it was liquid so i think thats probably what messed them up! – alice May 17 '11 at 19:05

3 Answers3

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3 grams (contingent on the relative weight of the rest of the recipe) is not a big deal.

But, since egg whites are such a pain to measure, it's very simple in recipes like this. Beat your egg whites slightly, then weigh and remove three grams. Much easier.

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I recently had to half an egg white and I had the same problem with the gloopiness. So I tried being creative, went to my medicine cabinet and used a syringe. It went a lot easier than I expected! (I removed the needle.)

Mien
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Put a pinch of salt in the egg whites and whisk them, and you should find it easier to remove a small quantity. The salt breaks up the 'gel' of the egg white and makes it more liquid.

ElendilTheTall
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