Joe Goofs

Late last week reader Marciella sent in a question about marjolaine layers. In essence she asked: if these are supposed to be “meringues” why don’t the directions call for whipping the whites and the sugar together? I thought: well, that’s just an idiosyncrasy of marjolaine recipes. I’ve read through probably ten of them and not one has instructed me to make an actual meringue.

Then the lightbulb went on. I realized that even though I’d read through ten different recipes for marjolaine, I’d only read through the ingredients lists, not the procedures. Why not? Because I’m lazy. The first two or three recipes I read produced sponge cake layers. I simply assumed from then on that if the ingredients lists were the same, the procedures would be the same.

Au contraire. When I went back through the recipes I’d found, I discovered that half of them called for adding at least some of the sugar to the egg whites. Doh! So THAT’s where all the missing meringue-style recipes were: staring me right in the face!

Embarrassed and curious, I decided to make the meringue-style layers and create a photo tutorial for them — which I did. You’ll find the alternate recipe and the pictures in the Making Marjolaine Step 5: The Layers post below. Oh, what a goof I am.