Little Marvels | Baking with Dorie

These are rounds of meringues, sandwiched with whipped cream and rolled in chocolate shavings and other crunchy bits. Dorie calls them little marvels after the famous merveilleux, or “marvelous cakes” from baker Fred Vaucamps in Paris. Like any pastry treats from Paris, they are pretty, luxurious and delightful. “Little marvels” don’t disappoint. However, they do consume a lot of your time and take up several hours of oven and freezer time.

Meringues are the amalgam of egg whites, sugar, air and heat. Recipes may vary, but the ratio of 50 grams of sugar to one large egg white seems to be the norm. Dorie’s recipe calls for distilled white vinegar as a stabilizer for the meringues. (Cream of tartar does the same trick to ensure the meringue’s cloud-like structure.) It’s a slow process adding sugar to the beaten and foamy whites, one tablespoon at a time. Again, it takes time and patience to whip together sugar and egg whites until you see shiny peaks, about 5 minutes in the stand mixer. The good news is with meringue, it’s hard to overdo it.

A vegan meringue recipe can be found here.

I use a piping bag to shape the meringues into 3-inch rounds. Bake them at 250°F for an hour. Then turn off the oven and let them dry for another hour. The center of the meringue puffs up a bit. I should have pressed down the center of each meringue before baking.

When it comes to making the cream, I’m ready for a shortcut by using a whipping siphon canister. For the crunch, I use the leftover Lotus Biscoff cookies and roll the meringue sandwich in shaved chocolate. That’s easy said than done! They are a bit messy, to say the least. I put them in the freezer, hoping for a little magic after everything gets firm.