Egg Clouds – Homecooking Wreckventure

April 19, 2015

Inspired by various posts on Reddit’s /r/food “egg clouds”, this is my version of it.

Egg clouds essentially are egg white meringues, with egg yolk centre and baked at a low temperature so you get a nice crusty meringue, soft chewy centre, and egg yolk that pours out when break them.

What you really need to consider is what “base” do you want your egg clouds on. You can make the little “cloud” basket on a non-stick baking sheet, then transfer them onto a plate, or toast/muffin/pancake/rosti, whatever makes you happy.

The whole theory is:

1) 1 Large Egg – Separate the yolk from the white
2) Whisk egg white till stiff peak forms.
3) Choose a base to pile meringue on, pile meringue onto it, leaving a shallow well for egg yolk to sit on top
4) Bake at 150 degrees celsius for 12-15mins, till meringue turn golden brown and yolk would be slightly cooked but still runny
5) Serve warm, take photos

Basic ingredients: Eggs – separated, bacon, sliced cheese, toast.

There is no right or wrong way to do this. Personally I prefer slicing thicker slices of bread instead of getting pre-sliced bread, and I find that this works a lot better.

Bacon weave!

I like bacon, and so I made up some bacon weave. Each weave requires 2 strip of streaky bacon. Streaky bacon is prefered for its layer of fat that crisps up when baked. And the bacon oil gives the bread extra flavour when dripped onto it while baking. Bake the weave on a non-stick baking sheet or on top of baking paper, fan forced 180 degrees celsius, 5 mins on each side. Do not over cook it as you will continue to cook it further on top of toast.

Meringue, baked bacon weave, cheese on toast, egg yolk

Here we see the egg whites – now meringues, cooked bacon weave, raw toast (giggles), sliced cheese and raw eggs. I couldn’t decide back then if I wanted the bacon on cheese or bacon on toast with cheese on top.

bacon weave on toast

Then it struck me, if I had the bacon on toast, the drippings would flavour the bread, but if was on the cheese, the cheese might form a layer, block the oil from being absorbed by the bread and just slide off. So bacon on bread, cheese on bacon, egg clouds on cheese.

1/2 assembled toastie

Here, bacon on bread, cheese on bacon.

meringue basket on toastie, make sure to leave a space for yolk

I piled the whites onto the prepared toastie with a spoon, remembering to leave a well in the middle for the egg yolk to sit on.

fully assembled before baking

Gently drop yolk into the well to complete assembly. I found my well a little too deep. Could have made it a little more shallow.

all baked and ready to eat!

As you can see, I do cut my bread a lot thicker than just regular slices. Here you can see bacon, melted cheese and golden meringue.

view from the top

The yolk is still runny after being baked, and the whites are crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside.

perfect breakfast

No breakfast is complete without coffee, and to top it all off, coffee bean yoghurt (5am Organics from Coles) topped with crushed chocolate coated coffee bean (Koko black of course!) there can never be too much coffee.

foodporn shot! (Yes I swapped plates to make egg yolk look more “pornographic”)

Here’s a food porn shot of pretty pretty egg yolk. The meringue can be a little foamy closer to the base where the yolk touches the meringue. If you prefer, you can always bake it for a little longer, but personally, I believe the runny yolks are the best.

Enjoy!