Vacherin

Name: Vacherin (Meringue Timbale)
Cuisine: French
Ingredients: To serve, fill at the time of serving with assorted ice-cream balls, whipped cream, and fresh strawberries or with whipped cream and red raspberries. If you have made the S and plume meringues, lean the three S-shaped meringues together on top of the filling, stick the two plumes together with a bit of meringue or whipped cream, and stand them in the center of the S-shaped pieces. Meringues can be made days in advance so long as they are kept dry. I store them in my pilot-heated oven. Meringues can only improve with drying out.; Butter and flour two cooky sheets. With a pan lid, or a compass, mark four 8-inch circles in the flour. Make Pâte à Meringue.; Put meringue into a pastry bag with ½-inch nozzle. Squeeze out 1-inch-thick meringue rings on the marked circles on the cooky sheets. Fill one ring completely with egg white from pouch in zig-zag fashion. Bake these in a 225-degree oven for about one hour, or until completely dried out. Do not let them brown at all. Set remaining meringue in a cool place, or refrigerate. (If meringue has been properly whipped, it will not “weep” in an hour.); When dry, take from oven and cool. Prepare a half recipe of meringue (4 whites and 1 cup of sugar plus salt). Coat the outside with meringue just as you would frost a cake. Once it has been frosted, put remaining meringue into pastry bag with star nozzle. Decorate with swirls and fancy designs of meringue. Bake a third time to dry out this new layer of meringue. If there is meringue left, make three fancy S-shaped meringues on the cooky sheet and two tapering plumes. These stand on top of the filled Vacherin.; When rings are done, take from oven. Let cool on pans and then lift each from the cooky sheet with a spatula. Wash one cooky sheet and dry. On it place a square of foil. Put the solid layer of meringue on the foil. Pipe raw meringue around the edge. Put a ring on top. Coat it with meringue and add the second ring. Coat it and then add the third ring. Continue until all rings have been added. The smaller the rings the higher a Vacherin can be built. For 8-inch size, 3 rings plus the bottom layer is about high enough, but you could add one more ring. Bake the stacked rings until the new meringue is dried out, or about another 40 minutes.

Meringue Timbale

Preparation info

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

Hows and Whys of French Cooking

By Alma Lach

Published 1974

About

Method

Butter and flour two cooky sheets. With a pan lid, or a compass, mark four 8-inch circles in the <