Meringue-Making On A Manic Monday: Silvanas

BlogCritics: my first article submission, Confessions Of A Chocolate Chaser, has been chosen as Editors' Picks.  You can read it here if you're interested.

I just discovered my own personal Bible, The Idiot's Guide To Managing Your Time.   To date, it has truly been a revelation in that I was able to write and submit my long overdue first article for Blog Critics, complete another article for a client after my regular office hours and managed to bake a batch of silvanas and meet up with a friend for  a cup of coffee.  All this accomplished on a manic Manila Monday!

Silvanas are to Filipinos what les macarons are to the French.  Although not as sweet as   macarons, they  are richer than their French counterpart.  Buttercream frosting is not only sandwiched between two cashew meringue wafers, but all over the outer parts as well.

They are a cookie (biscuit) version of the sans rival torte with a few differences.  Instead of coating the oval-shaped cashew meringue wafers with chopped cashew nuts like its predecessor, silvanas are coated with fine cookie or cake crumbs instead.  In addition, unlike the sans rival being both Goan and Filipino, silvanas, on the other hand,  are exclusively Filipino.

Much like the sans rival,  silvanas are deceitful little treats. Their petite size, in addition to its light and crispy meringue shells that sandwich just about a tablespoonful of cholesterol buttercream frosting are enough to betray any dieter.  After sampling one,  you justify your desire for a second one by saying to yourself:  They're pretty small.  After the third or fourth, you later  realize that you have unwittingly wolfed down these creamy and crumby petite bêtes (little beasts) of a cookie.  You have been outwitted by les petites bêtes (the little beasts), making you look and act like la bête (the beast) that silvanas will soon be your  irresistible bête noire.

Although silvanas are not as  diva-like to make as their French cousins in a sense that they don't require that coveted pretty pied (feet) or to be dried for an hour for a delicate eggshell-like exterior,  the way these cookies are eaten requires some compromises.  I told you they were les petites bêtes!   I did not call these cookies "the little beasts" for nothing, you know.

Since these cookies' exteriors are frosted, they are usually eaten frozen to maintain the  wafer's crispiness, which means, eating the frozen buttercream between and around them.   Frozen butter of any kind is abhorrent to me.  A soft, fluffy and creamy buttercream at room temperature, on the other hand, means silvanas with soggy (sniff, sniff) meringue wafers.  When refrigerated, unfortunately, the wafers also lose their crispiness.   So, it is either crispy cookies-frozen buttercream (ewww!), soft and creamy buttercream-soggy cookies or refrigerated cookies-soft, uncrispy cookies.  Such compromises indeed.   Seriously readers, have you ever seen or heard of a cookie that reminds you that you can't have it all?    Sly silvanas, indeed!

The humid tropics have a wonderful way of making a fairly competent home baker's ego as deflated as the egg whites she's whipping.  For someone who has decent meringue-making skills when in the northern hemisphere,  I had to  whip my deflated ego into stiff peaks at minimum.  So I went for a second attempt with acceptable results.  And, I had to use up those cake scraps from the crema de fruta I made for New Years Eve.  Ideally though, finely ground cookie crumbs should be used as a coating to give the silvanas a finer and smoother texture both in appearance and mouthfeel. 

On to the recipe....

Preparation:

Grind 1/2 cup of cashews as finely as possible.

Remember those cake scraps from New Year's Eve? If using cake
scraps, make sure to remove the brown crusts.  
Grind the cake or cookies into fine, powdery crumbs.
  If using cookies (biscuits),make sure to use a plain, unflavored kind. 

KM is a proud leftie.

Using an oval-shaped cookie cutter, trace around it on 

parchment paper (baking paper) and flip over.  

On to the wafers...

Wafers
1/2 cup egg whites
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose  flour
1/2 cup unsalted cashew nuts, ground/crushed finely and sifted 

Directions: 
1.  Preheat oven to 300 deg F (149C). 

2.  Grease and flour cookie sheet. Lay stencilled sheet of parchment paper.


3 .Beat egg whites until stiff. Add sugar slowly. Fold in flour gradually, alternating with cashews.

4.  Fill the icing bag with the mixture and pipe onto cookie sheets . 

5. Bake for 15-25  minutes or until lightly brown.  Cool on wire racks.
 
While the cookies are cooling...
 
Buttercream frosting
3/4 cup whole milk 
3/4 cup sugar 
1 cup (200g) butter
1 tsp (5 ml)  vanilla extract
1 cup cake or cookie  crumbs

Directions:
1.  Dissolve sugar in milk. 
2.. Cream butter until pale in color. 
3.  Add sugar-milk mixture slowly while beating continuously until smooth. Stir in vanilla extract.

Assembly:

1.  Spread icing on one cookie, ugly side up and sandwich with another cookie.

2.  Frost  the sandwich all around and coat in cake or cookie crumbs. 


3.  Refrigerate immediately to prevent the wafers from becoming soggy.


source:  yahoo