My Brazo de Mercedes Horror Story

I was desperately craving for Brazo de Mercedes. Since they don’t have it here in Japan, I googled for a recipe hoping I will be able to “simulate” it. Here’s what I found. (I am tamad, so I won’t even bother trying to edit this. I’ll just copy and paste the recipe. Sue me. Nah, thanks to this site: http://www.pinoyrecipe.net)

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Ingredients:

Filling:

• 5 cups milk
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 8 egg yolks
• 1/4 cup finely ground and toasted cashew nuts

Meringue:

• 10 egg whites
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cooking Instructions:

Filling:

• In a saucepan, simmer milk over low heat until reduced to 2 cups. Add sugar, butter, and vanilla extract, stirring constantly. Remove from heat.
• Beat egg yolks in mixing bowl. Add a little of the milk to the egg yolks, stir, then gradually add mixture by spoonfuls back into the saucepan, beating constantly. Stir well to avoid curdling.
• Add cashew nuts and continue cooking entire mixture over low heat, stirring constantly, until mixture has the consistency of a paste. Set aside.
  

Meringue:

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Beat egg whites until stiff. Gradually add 1 cup sugar, beating continuously. Stir in vanilla.
  
• Line a large cookie sheet with parchment paper greased with butter and spread meringue on top. Bake until brown.
  
• Spread filling evenly on top of meringue and roll into a log.
  
• Brush with butter and brown again in oven.

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I had everything on the ingredients list, so I proceeded on having a go at it. Bahala na si Batman. (I quartered the proportion of all the ingredients since I will only be feeding myself.)

As always, since my kitchen isn’t really a kitchen but a cube with a hotplate, ricecooker and a microwave/convection oven, I did the impossible. My filling turned out great. But my meringue was terrible! See, I do everything by hand and I beat my eggwhites using a fork! Yes, a fork! (That’s how cruel single, nomadic living is. Nonetheless, it’s still pretty fun!) Back to our subject.

So, I had to “fluff” the freaking eggwhites, right? And there I was, beating the crap out of it for half an hour (while watching “Sex in the City” reruns in my laptop), so I thought, maybe what I made was “fluffy” enough. I really haven’t seen how fluffy a meringue should be so I was taking a guess. Also, I had to stop because my arms felt like I had been rowing for miles or something.

After doing the rest of the instructions, I put the thing in the oven and let it brown… alas, my meringue turned out into something like baked egg whites with sugar and vanilla. Ay ambot! The recipe was supposed to be the generic Brazo de Mercedes recipe and I still managed to ruined it. Oh well. Practice makes perfect, so they say.

Anyway, so I had this pseudo Brazo de Mercedes and I still ate it. I saved some of the filling and stored it in the ref. I could use some custard dessert tomorrow.