I wanted to learn how to bake from scratch this year. However, I didn’t even know how or where to begin. What would make a good first attempt?
As luck would have it, I didn’t have to figure it out on my own. Yesterday, Christmas Day, my brother-in-law gave me a spur-of-the-moment baking lesson how to make brazo de Mercedes. “What is it?” you may wonder. It is a Filipino meringue roll filled with soft custard. I’ve bought and eaten it for so long that making it myself never occurred to me.
My bro started the lesson by separating the egg whites from the egg yolks. Both egg whites and egg yolks will be used – the egg whites for the meringue; the yolks for the custard.
Put the egg whites on your mixer bowl. Add the cream of tartar. Beat the egg whites and cream of tartar until soft peaks form.
It took a while, so I had time to take yet another picture.
Here I am adding the sugar little by little.
After the sugar, add the vanilla extract. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of that.
When the mixture is ready, you will see these beautiful soft peaks. Gorgeous, right?
Then you get a flat pan and put wax paper on it. You spread out the meringue on the pan and bake for an hour.
While the meringue is baking, remember the yolks that was set aside earlier? It’s their turn now. Grab your double boiler, set your stove on low and mix both the yolks and condensed milk in the double boiler. Whisk it for an hour. You read that right, an hour. Maybe that’s why they call this brazo de Mercedes (brazo means “arm” in Spanish). You will definitely exercise your arms by the constant stirring of the custard.
Once it reaches a thick consistency, turn off your stove and move your double boiler away from heat.
While your custard is cooling off, cover your work area with brown mailing paper. Sprinkle confectioners sugar on the paper.
After your meringue has spent time in the oven, take it out of the oven. Now it’s time to remove it from the pan. Invert the meringue on the brown paper. You’ll see the wax paper, so feel free to remove that as well. Your meringue will look like the one below.
Get your cooled custard and spread it on the meringue.
Here’s the meringue topped with the custard.
Now roll the meringue quickly. It should get covered by confectioners sugar. Brush off any excess sugar. Voila! Not a perfect roll (see the crack on the left side), but not bad for a first attempt.
How about a slice?
What do you think?