My wife, son and I were invited to a Passover seder at our friends’ house and were tasked with bringing a dessert or two.
I flipped through a Passover cookbook and decided on chocolate macaroons. It only had five ingredients, and macaroons are always the best Passover dessert. The recipe called for 3 egg whites, coconut, ground almonds, some sugar and chocolate. Keep that in mind.
As I kept flipping for an accompanying sweet, I came across this sentence under the walnut cookies:
This is a good way to use egg yolks left over from macaroons and meringues.
Bingo.
While an excess of egg yolks is a familiar Passover problem, it can occur at other times of the year (as meringue fans will attest). It raises an important point for any time one part of an egg or any food is requried: find a complimentary recipe. If you whites, you really should give this macaroon recipe a shot.Â
The walnut cookies (nowhere near as good as the macaroons) called for 4 yolks. So that left me with an extra egg white. After a moment of strategizing, it promptly became the main portion of
my son’s lunch. [note–I rarely go the cute route with his foods, but couldn’t resist here].
One other tip: After years of being frustrated by egg whites’ refusal to let go and drop out of the egg separator, I found a decent solution. Snip the dangling strands of egg with a scissors.
Comments
5 responses to “A Different Passover Story”
I avoid the problem by never separating eggs if I can help it, even if they are for the same recipe.
I came across this recipe for French macaroons today:
http://www.baronesstapuzina.com/2010/03/29/p-is-for-patience-and-passover/
You might also like my post on avoiding food waste on Passover:
http://www.greenprophet.com/2010/03/21/18858/ten-tips-to-avoid-food-waste-on-passover/
So how did they come out?
I’m pretty sure you can freeze egg whites or yolks if you have extra. But I’m not 100% sure, so I’m going to find out and report back to you. Love the smiley face cooked egg whites by the way!
Yes you can freeze egg whites! They freeze fantastically well, as any avid ice cream maker knows.
The yolks are harder though. When frozen straight off they thaw into a jelly like mass that won’t mix into anything. It’s better to stabilize them with either 1/2 teaspoon of salt or 1 Tablespoon of sugar per 1 cup of yolks.
However! Why not make a custard? They’re easier than you think, and the recipe can easily be scaled up or down depending on the number of egg yolks.
Hannah, thanks for the tips and the link. The macaroons, which my wife made, were about 5x better than my walnut cookies. Fortunately, I’ve enjoyed my fair share of the former.
Freezing egg parts–interesting! I guess the take-home message here is freeze extra whites and make custard with extra yolks. I do like custards…
If I don’t have any other use for the yolks I feed them to my cats. I’ve heard egg whites are bad for cats, but the yolks are good.