Leftover Egg White Ideas and Macaroon Redux

I have a friend who told me that she was working on a spreadsheet that shows which recipes have only egg whites or yolks, and how many of each, so that it would be easy to plan ways to make lots of awesome stuff without wasting half an egg. Good idea, right? I'm inspired to label blog posts in this way, maybe it will be easy to find egg white/egg yolk companion recipes.

After making the lovely tiramisu which uses 4 egg yolks and no egg whites, and not wanting to just throw away the egg whites, I brainstormed ways to use them all:

-Make an egg white omelet
-Make 2 more batches of tiramisu, and use the 12 leftover egg whites for angel food cake
-Use in pancakes/waffles instead of whole eggs
-Make macaroons --> the winner!

If you have any more ideas, please share in the comments :)

I doubled my macaroon recipe, and I thought I would re-do the recipe for you with better instructions, but no pictures.

Macaroons

3 c. unsweetened coconut

1 c. finely chopped almonds

1 c. sugar

4 egg whites

Preheat oven to 350. Grease a cookie sheet. 

Chop up the coconut finely - I do this in my awesome spice grinder about 1 cup at a time; it just takes a couple seconds and I shake the grinder while it works to get everything ground evenly, but not turned it into powder. Place the chopped coconut, finely chopped almonds and sugar in a bowl, mix all together. Add egg whites, mix well. This last time I made the cookies, I beat the egg whites for a couple minutes until they were frothy before adding them, and it was easier to mix them evenly into the dry ingredients, and I think it gave the finished cookies a better texture.

Scoop small balls of the mixture onto the prepared cookie sheet, only about 2 tablespoons per cookie, or use a small ice cream/cookie scoop things for easy evenly sized cookies. Bake for about 10 minutes, them set on the pan for a couple of minutes, then scoop them off and let them cool on a rack.

These cookies will not spread out, you can place them very close together on the pan and they will not grow into each other. I fit this whole (double-)batch onto one cookie sheet. 

Tiramisu for Mormons

While the government is shut down, Lovemuffin is home, video gaming, catching up on dental work, and watching Downton Abbey (but you didn't hear that last one from me). I suggested that he make this treat for me to come home to after my long day of work (someone's got to bring home the vegi-bacon), it's called Sinfully Sinless Tiramisu and it has no coffee or rum in it. (No judgment if you go for the Tiramisu with rum and coffee - everyone is welcome here :) )

I saw it first on my friend's blog, and the original recipe is here, You'll have to click over to one of those links for the recipe, it's too many steps for me to write it all out for you. But don't be put off by the many steps and components. It was pretty easy for us to do it, and we even made it together, which usually is more difficult. (Lovemuffin thinks I'm bossy when I want him to cook with me, and doesn't like that. What?!?)

Instead of copying the whole recipe for you I "documented" the process.

Lovemuffin dipped the ladyfingers in the chocolate mix and arranged in the pan (and looked super serious the whole time).

I made the custard part. I've never made a real custard from scratch over the stove before. Here are my Special Instructions for other custard first-timers: read and follow the instructions, re-read as needed, and google search for descriptions and images of "custard back of spoon" for more insights to help you know when it's done.

We forgot to document the whipping of the cream, the mixing together of the custard and the mascarpone cheese and then the whipped cream, the layering construction and sprinkling of cocoa powder, you'll have to use your imagination. But here is the finished product after chilling in the fridge, ready for (Mormon) consumption!

This was amazing, so delicious, super rich and decadent. It is definitely going to become part of my repertoire.  

A couple more notes: 

1) Someone (not me) really likes the rum flavor, so he doubled the rum extract, I thought that was too much, but it wasn't terrible or inedible, just more rummy than I like. I also would have been happy with just vanilla extract added. The hazards of cooking with others.

2) At first Lovemuffin was afraid that he had soaked the ladyfinger cookies too long, so he took out the extra saturated ones and replaced them (I suspect he mostly wanted to taste test the soaked cookies), but when we cut into it the cookies were pretty crunchy still, next time we will probably soak them for longer. But I imagine that the further in advance you make the Tiramisu, the more moisture the cookies can soak up, so that's something to take into account. I'll have to test this theory tomorrow at breakfast. Haha! 

*edit* After eating this dessert all weekend, I recommend that if you are making it ahead of time, give yourself enough time to let it chill/set up overnight, closer to 12 hours. The custard/mascarpone will set up more and hold the pieces together, instead of what you see in our pictures, where all the cookie parts are falling apart and the custard is oozing everywhere. And I was right, the ladyfingers will get properly softened after a longer chill time. But if you just CAN'T WAIT extra time to dig in, it of course tastes just as good after a short 4 hour set-up time. 

Bonus points to anyone who can tell me what is up with these faces I'm making here. Lovemuffin sure knows how to catch me at my best. (Oh yeah, and check out my shirt, I made that shirt, you should see the stripe matching! BAM!) (Also, bonus points for me for the number of parentheses used in this post.)