Easter Dessert

I made Tangerine Semifreddo with Salted Almond Brittle for dessert. Recipe from Epicurious. It was a process!

The first part was to make an almond brittle which was a literal hot mess - but not that complicated. 

Clockwise from top: Yolk custard, Egg Whites, Almond Brittle, Cream

For the filling  I had a number of different bowls set out on the counter at once. First I had to cook the egg yolk/tangerine mixture in a bowl over simmering water and then cool it really fast by beating it while the bowl was set over ice water. It was my first time making any type of custard so the process was new to me. 

Next up was whipping the cream. I chilled a bowl first and then poured the cream in and whipped away. Pretty simple. 

Then it was egg whites time. Whipping egg whites scares me - what with the possibility of both under whipping and over whipping and a fine line in between. Turned out beautifully though! 

After that I folded together the yolks, whites, and cream and layered the fluffy mixture into plastic-wrap lined loaf pans sprinkling some chopped almond brittle in between layers. I wrapped it up tightly and then stuck it in the freezer to set overnight. It looked yummy!

And then about midnight I suddenly realized that while the recipe called for the yolks to be cooked the whites never were. So I started worrying about giving people salmonella and did some googling on freezing raw meringues and decided it would just be better if I re-did the dessert in a safer way. So I drove to Wal-Mart in the middle of the night to  get more eggs and such and then followed instructions I found online to cook/cool the egg whites similar to the process for the yolks. (And, yes, I do embrace my insanity. Feel free to laugh at me. :) ) The egg whites did not get anywhere near as fluffy - but at least there was no raw egg?  The result was a MUCH shorter loaf of tangerine yummyness - but it was still yummy.

The day of I made the tangerine sauce. I think the sauce turned out a little bitter/salty and I'm wondering if it's because I used a juicer to get the tangerine juice rather than hand squeezing. Perhaps some of the rind or something got into the juice.  So, I'd suggest hand juicing.

In the end it had a creamy ice cream texture with a nice tangerine flavor and the crunchy brittle throughout gave it a nice texture variety.