Mai Tai flavored cocktail vauquelin

Recently I received an email from Thorsten Spickenreuther, a German PhD student, who inspired by my post on vauquelins asked me whether I had made any cocktail flavored vauquelins yet. I gave him the details of what I had tried and encouraged him to experiment a little. Here’s a report which he sent me (and allowed me to share with you):

Cocktail Vauqueline – First Experiment

I started off with just one egg white and slowly added up to 100ml of almond syrup (i.e. water & sugar) and about 50ml of lime juice (i.e. acid) because the end result should be a Mai Tai flavoured Vauqueline. As it was already 2 am, my motivation for using a whisk was rather low, so my electric mixer had to do the job. Moreover, i didn’t have a metal bowl at hand, so the increase in volume was not as big as may have been expected – the result was about 1.5 liters of firm, stiff egg white foam.

As my silicon moulds survive my microwave without problems, i thought ,,Why not using them here to get a nice pyramid shape for the planned Mai Tai flavoured dessert?” No sooner said than done, and after 8 seconds at 440W, the result looked quite nice. The volume increased a little and the foam maintained its shape very well. The pyramids came out of the moulds easily and even could be cut by pressing a spatula to the blade of a knife, cut and then separate (a two blade knife? …slightly reminds me of a Dire Straits song…). Using smaller moulds (hemispheres) was no problem, too.

Okay, now we have a nice foam with an abundantly sweet’n’sour and almondy taste. But this is not Mai Tai yet and Trader Vic would turn in his grave. So we need at least some rum and a dash of orange curac¸ao. Adding the liquor (40-50ml), the foam broke down a little, but regained its firmness after a while of whisking and the final result was like before. I even did a quick-and-dirty dessert-decoration by adding caramelized kiwi slices and a bit of thickened passion fruit sauce.

Oh… yes…… most important: The taste was excellent. You have to be a bit careful with the quantity of the syrup so the ,,drink” doesn’t get too sweet, but the Cocktail Vauqueline experiment sure was a success. You also have to be careful with the liquor – a further increase left me with a flowing mass and i wasn’t able to get a firm foam again, even after a long time of whisking (this may also be due to the long time of standing, the plastic bowl and the electric mixer with rather thick wires). For the future, i’m going to try some other cocktail flavours and how using fatty components like cream of coconut affects the stability of the foam in the end. I think the cocktail combination is suited best for creamy and juicy cocktails (i.e. ,,fancies”) but i will try something like Cuba Libre and Gin Fizz, too (although i think the ,,jelly-approach” is better for this type of cocktails). An interesting experiment would also be to use an iSi Whip with N₂O charging to speed up the creation process.

If you want to contact Thorsten directly he can be reached by email on sylance [at] web [dot] de.