Snatching Victory From the Jaws of Defeat – Giant Silvanas, Anyone???

Despite a near total disaster with the meringues for the individual serving sized silvanas I wrote about yesterday, I also made about 8 large meringues, about the size of a child’s fist, thinking I would be serving them with ice cream and a berry and sugar compote. But since I had labored so hard to make a coffee and rhum flavored buttercream and had lots of it in the fridge waiting for the silvana meringues, I figured I would sandwich buttercream between two large meringues, then slather the outside with more buttercream and roll it all in blitzed rosquillos (cookies from Cebu). I wrapped these in foil and stuck them in the freezer, and a few hours later, I unwrapped them and cut a large slice and tasted it… it was BRILLIANT. Not quite a sans rival, and bigger than a typical silvana, but the mongrel meringe dessert tasted pretty darned good. Two crisp/chewy layers of meringue, with lots of hardened buttercream and lots of cookie crumbs.

I think a big part of the success taste wise, despite the horrific looks, was the use of incredibly good ingredients… organic egg whites, lots of blitzed almonds and rosquillos, good butter, cream and rhum…

And with the crushed silvana meringues from the botched experiment? I layered them in little foil pans with some good whipped cream and some of the buttercream and topped it all with rosquillos crumbs and froze these as well. They weren’t as good as the giant silvanas, but they were quite yummy as well. They got soggier because of the whipped cream… but rich and sweet would be an understatement!

As for the silvanas, I shall take many of the readers comments on the previous post to heart and give it another try, and perhaps another one after that… and when i am happy with the results, then I can post a recipe that worked for me. :)