How To Beat Egg Whites

Want to attempt a chiffon cake, sponge cake, lemon pancakes, or a meringue etc this weekend? What they all have in common, is that you have to beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. What? Why?

(Confession: Actually I was doing a post on the orange chiffon cake but it was too long and so I decided to break it up. Hence the random oranges in the pictures.)

Whisked egg whites trap a lot of air. The air is a raising agent. It results in light airy cakes and pancakes.

How?
1. We need two bowls and one cup. The bowl that will hold the egg whites should be clean and dry. Preferably a stainless steel or glass bowl (but plastic still works). A tip I learnt was to dip a paper towel in vinegar, and do a quick wipe of the bowl and the beaters.

2. Room temperature eggs. Most of us store eggs in the fridge, and do not have an hour or more to wait for the eggs to come to room temperature. So what to do? Place the eggs in a bowl of warm (not hot) water and leave for 5 -10 minutes.

3. Now to separating the eggs. Remember we have two bowls: one for the egg whites and a second one for the yolks. But we start by breaking the egg over the cup.

Crack an egg carefully into two. Transfer the yolk from one half shell to the other, letting the egg white slide into the cup. The egg yolk is heavy so it remains on the shell. When all the white has poured out to the cup, transfer it to the clean bowl (wiped down with vinegar). Dump the yolk in the second bowl. It doesn’t matter if the bowl with the yolks has some egg white. But there should not be any yolk in the bowl of egg whites. Egg yolk is equal to fat. Fat is an enemy of stiff peaks.

Imagine you have separated four eggs perfectly: four yolks in one bowl and four whites in a different bowl (like the picture above) . Then you crack the fifth egg, and it pierces the yolk and so now there is egg yolk in the bowl of whites *crying emoji*.

Lesson: Separate your egg first into a cup and then transfer to the bowl. If you mess with one egg, you won’t mess the whole batch.

4. Next, beat the egg whites starting on low speed. A tiny bit of lemon juice or cream of tartar helps but it is not a must.

It always blows my mind how you start off with this … (that’s cream of tartar on the whites) …

…. to this! I asked my husband how much he would say the increase in volume was. He guesstimates that the first picture is a twentieth of the second.

Notice in the photo above, that the whites are drooping from the beater and even though they are holding their shape, the peak (at the tip of the beaters) kind of falls over. This is a soft peak.

Now, for the final step. Increase the speed.

And voila!

These are firm or stiff peaks. They should be able to hold their shape. If you beat for a few seconds longer, they can become even stiffer.

However, if you beat for too long, they break apart. It is easy to rectify overbeaten whites though. Add another egg white and very lightly—using a fork—whisk it in.

Any interesting tips on how you beat or separate your egg whites?

Parting pics … egrets on Lake Naivasha