Folding egg whites and cream

from my garden

Good evening.  I hope everyone is enjoying the summer so far.  It's not been too hot, nor too humid, although those are relative terms, of course.  But in my mind so far this has been a pleasant early summer made so by evenings and mornings that are fairly cool and dry, as in "not humid".  

I'm getting ready to announce a date on which I will start offering food items from my kitchen again.  Covid-19 is not gone by any means, but as we are all adjusting to the reality of it, I am looking forward to getting back to cooking for everyone.  So watch here or on the main website for that announcement very very soon.

Today I am responding to a question posed to me:  How does one fold whipped egg whites or whipped cream into a much thicker mixture without losing all that whipped airy-ness?  Well, here is an easy way to do it.

portion of whipped on right goes into thick on left

First, I take a portion (about 1/4 or 1/3) of the whipped lighter mixture, the egg whites or cream, and plop it on top of the thicker mixture, and fold it in, although in reality because the thicker mixture is so much denser, it's not really folding as much as it it gingerly combining.  The key thing here is that by combining in this way, the thicker mixture is lightened considerably, even if much of the air is taken out of the initial addition of the whipped material.  That's OK, though, because by lightening the thicker mixture, you've made it much easier to fold in the remaining whipped mixture.

add remaining whipped to thick

Now, add all the rest of the whipped cream or whipped egg whites to the lightened thicker mixture.  At this point, it is quite easy to fold in all that nice whipped stuff.  The thicker mixture is not so dense anymore, and it easily incorporates all the whipped stuff without requiring such force that the air is lost.

everything folded in

And there you go.  Now you have a nicely folded mixture that started out with something very dense.  Trying to fold everything in at once can be a really tricky thing.  This easy solution works very well. And that's important because a lot of great foods have fantastic texture that comes from folding in whipped egg whites or whipped cream.

That's all for tonight.  Have a great end-of-your-week.  Eat some good food, everyone.  Bon appetit!