How to bake (almost) nothing

This year Quentin is in the states for Thanksgiving. Neil and Laura invited us and a few other lab people to his home for Thanksgiving. We decided to make a dessert for the event, which Quentin insisted be European (without protestation). We verified that this recipe was, in fact, European by getting it in French.

It's called Merveilleux, and it's essentially a meringue cream cake. As the recipe clearly states, it is easy.

The first step was to make the meringue. We did this by beating together ten egg whites with powdered sugar, placing them in a bag, and spreading them in a spiral pattern to form a disk which we baked at 215 fahrenheit for 2 hours.

Quentin insisted each disk must have a flat bottom, but I only had two baking pans large enough for a disk and we needed to make three. I suggested we use the pan with a pattern on the bottom. Quentin preferred the idea of placing one disk directly on the bottom of the oven. A bit skeptical of this approach, we decided to wait in the kitchen attentively in the event anything undesirable occurred. Fortunately, we didn't have to wait very long until said disk lit on fire. Almost immediately, how convenient...

We transferred the disk to the irregularly shaped pan and placed it back in the oven.

While those baked, we decided to grate the chocolate we would need for topping the cake. 1 pound.

We tried two techniques, grating and cutting. And ultimately decided to mix the shavings for some variety.

Together that produced this satisfying chocolate mound.

The most challenging part of this was, by far, producing the whipped cream. A fairly straightforward task. Except that we could not acquire whipping cream. We tried more than five stores, and every single one was sold out.

We figured half and half was at least halfway to whipping cream. Add a little fat back in there and we're back in buisness.

Hmmm...not so quick. The butter and half and half seperated quickly. Perhaps if we heat both we could homogenize them, cool the mixture, then whip it to perfection.

It looked promising at first. But after cooking and whipping the butter seperated again. At this point it was around 3AM so we decided to call it a night, and survey our options in the morning.

With the new day Quentin returned with frozen dumplings, mochi, and some store-bought whipped cream. All good options but we decided to proceed with the latter.

We whipped the cream together with mascarpone, powdered sugar, and a bit of cocoa. Unfortunately the whipping caused the cream to lose shape. We rectified by adding some butter as one would with a buttercream frosting.

With an acceptable cream in hand we layered the meringue with the cream and let it set in the freezer. After 20 minutes, we removed it from the freezer and dressed the cake with the chocolate shavings.

After adjusting its container we re-placed it in the freezer and crossed our fingers.

Given our deviations from the intended course it felt we had been sufficiently creative to warrant giving our own name to the creation. Serendipitously just the day before Thanksgiving I discovered a list of names for all manners of hounds recorded in a 15th century manuscript.

I knew immediately this list would offer great utility in naming projects in the future. In the past we've had the unfortunate proclivity to indefinitely append acronyms to one another (eehrm...). No more!

"Wappis" stood out to me because it invokes the toilsome whipping action we partook in futilely and which kept my roomates up on the eve of Thanksgiving. Unfortunately my roommate pointed out this may be interpretted as something vulgar.

After consulting the list again I discovered "Wellyfedde". A perfect name for a dish which tops off a Thanksgiving meal, after which we will be well fed.

And with that we present "Wellyfedde".