Entrant Name: 8by0
Name of Entry: Cloud Eggs
Recipe and Description:
Cloud eggs are sunny-side-up eggs with a twist: the eggs are separated, and the egg whites are whipped to stiff peaks, so that the whites have a fluffy texture and look like those fancy Instagram breakpast pictures. The yolk is supposed to look like the sun, with a cloud of egg white behind it, I believe. Hence the name. Unfortunately, mine got overcooked, which kind of ruined the effect- not sure if that counts for Tasty Transmutation, but it was
supposed to look like something :P
The texture is like how you would expect a cloud's tetxure to be just by looking at it, before learning that it's just basically white water vapor and dust. Soft and fluffy. Very fun to poke once it's cooked, because it springs back.
INGREDIENTS:
4 eggs
Pinch of salt
1/4 cup grated parmesan or other hard cheese
Optional seasonings (I used chili powder and Kraft parmesan. You can really use anything. Bits of cooked bacon, ham, scallions, chives, dill, random herbs, seasonings in the more suspcious corners of your pantry).
INSTRUCTIONS:
Preheat your oven to 400° F. Grease a baking sheet or line it with silpat/greased parchment paper.
Separate the yolks and whites of the eggs, putting the whites in a bowl and the yolks wherever you want, as long as they don't break, because you'll be using them later.
Make sure your egg-white bowl is not made of plastic and is very clean and dry.
Why? Science time! Feel free to skip all the italicized stuff if you're just here for the food, because this is alll science. Chemistry. The recipe itself is fairly short, except for instructions on how to whip the egg whites, so I'm adding science for fun; this is Baldwin's Bash, after all.
An egg white is made up of mostly water and partly protein. These proteins are chains of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins.
Some of these amino acids are attracted to water (hydrophilic), and some are repelled by water (hydrophobic). Silly hydrophobes. They're going to get dehydrated by not drinking enough water, I'm tellin' you. But they make it work. The chain of acids is curled up in its default state, so that the hydrophobic amino acids are packed safely away from the water in the center of the curl, and the hydrophilic ones get to be with the water on the outside. A nice, symbiotic relationship.
When you beat up a liquid, the liquid will form air bubbles. Even water does. The reason why egg whites change and water doesn't is because water molecules are attracted to each other, so this would make the bubbles pop quickly without proteins to help. Remember that, it'll be important later; water molecules love each other. Hydrophilic amino acids also love water, and water loves them too.
So when egg whites are beaten up, they form air bubbles. These bubbles get up next to an amino acid curl, and it uncurls so that the hydrophobic center can stick into the air, and the hydrophilic center can stay in the water. Once all these curls are uncurled, they bond with each other, creating a strong network.
Now, the water molecules love each other, but they also love the hydrophilic amino acids. They're very greedy, so they try to get close to both, squeezing out the poor hydrophobic amino acids, which helps them stick out into the air as described in the previous paragraph. This makes the entire protein chain move to the surface of the egg white, where the hydrophilic amino acids get between the water molecules at the surface.
The water molecules find that they love each other less the further away from each other they get, with the hydrophilics pushing between them, so they spread out and create a film of bubbles, instead of sticking together.
With the water creating bubbles instead of popping them, and the network of proteins preventing the bubbles from being popped, the egg whites can foam up, becoming basically a white mass of bubbles held in place with proteins. TL;DR: EGG WHITES CONTAIN PROTEIN AND WATER. THE PROTEIN CHAINS, WHEN BEATEN, BOND TOGETHER TO CREATE A SINGLE LONG CHAIN OF PROTEINS, WHICH IS A STRONG NETWORK TO PREVENT BUBBLES FROM POPPING, AS WELL AS MAKING SURE THAT THE WATER MOLECULES ARE LESS ATTRACTED TO EACH OTHER SO THEY SPREAD OUT AND MAKE GOOD BUBBLES INSTEAD OF ATTRACTING EACH OTHER.
...that was still long, but oh well. If you don't get this but you want to get this, you can hit me up and I'll try to explain it better. Or just google it for a simplified version.
So what does that have to do with bowl material and fat?
Plastic bowls tend to have tiny, almost-unseeable nicks and scratches from use, and these nicks collect fat in them. Even that miniscule amount of fat can ruin the Great Protein Chaim (tm). So, use a clean bowl, free of grease or fat. This is why you have to remove the egg yolks; they're almost entirely made out of fat.
Fats intefere so much because they bond with the proteins, so the proteins can't bond with each other and make that nice network that stops the bubbles from popping.
So a bit of egg yolk or fat gets into your egg whites, you'll probably be done for. Try whipping it if you want, because it can handle VERY MINISCULE amounts of fat, but you'll likely have to start over.
If your eggs are successfully separated, add a pinch of salt to your egg whites to help whipping. Grab an electric or stand mixer and whip them eggs.
You can use a whisk and do it by hand, but that requires a fair bit of elbow grease.
Whipping eggs is fairly easy. You'll want to whip these to STIFF PEAKS, which means that they hold their shape; if you use an electric mixer, turn it off once the eggs get white and foamy and pull it out of the foam. Turn it upside down. The peaks will probably slump; those are soft peaks. Once they hold their shape, they're stiff peaks, which is what we want. Be careful not to over beat, because the protein network will collapse.
Start out with the mixer on low and once it foams up, increase the speed.
Assuming you've whipped your eggs nicely, carefully fold in some grated slices of a hard cheese, like Parmesan. Don't use the Kraft powder stuff. I tried that with my first batch, and it completrly ruined the egg white. It'll be fine without if you don't have hard cheese nearby.
Just FOLD, don't STIR, so you don't break all the bubbles and proteins and things.
Divide your whipped egg whites into four (or however many eggs you used) mounds onto your previoudly prepared baking sheet. Make a yolk-size indentation in the center of each mound for the yolk. Sprinkle on toppings like bacon and ham, if you have them; don't add powdered stuff or herbs yet.
Bake in the upper third of the oven until the white starts to turn golden, about 3-5 minutes. Remove and add one yolk to each mound, along with powdered seasonings and/or herbs.
Bake for about 3 more minutes.
Remove and serve immediately, with toast if desired.
Experimental dish?: This wasn't my first time whipping egg whites, so I'm not sure if that counts, but everything else was new. The first attempt failed miserably because I added Kraft parmesan to the egg whites and stirred, rendering it inedible, but it worked out nicely the second time. The baking time was the issue, because the yolks
looked undercooked, but they were actually very cooked by the time they were taken out. The recipe has been edited for a shorter baking time that I'll try out next time. It was still nice, and the general consensus was that I should make it again but cook it for less, and add more seasonings like bacon and proper cheese.
Picture of Finished Product (with name/ID included):
I have two pictures, if that's okay- a "pretty" one, and something I just grabbed real fast with my username/ID, as per the rules. I wasn't sure if the eggs would deflate or not (they didn't), so the first picture had to get snapped fast and the second one was after everything was ready. But minus the ID, because I forgot.
