Portuguese Sweet Meringue with Custard • Farófias

Directions

1. Separate the eggs and whisk the egg whites until they are almost set, add a little salt and about 30 grams of powdered sugar (you can use white sugar but powdered will work better), whisk until you get a stiff meringue.
2. Pour 500ml of milk into a wide pan (it’s important to be as wide as possible to make it easier to cook the egg whites), let it begin to boil slowly, then lower the heat, keep it warm.
3. Then pour spoonfuls (best to use a large soup serving spoon or something similar) of the meringue into the hot milk, try to make sure each spoonful is about the same size, let it cook one side of the meringue, then turn and cook the other side, usually it’s about 2 to 3 minutes per side.
4. Remove the cooked meringue with a slotted spoon (its a large serving spoon with little wholes to drain or draining spoon) to a serving platter, many people drain the cooked meringue on absorbent paper before putting them the serving platter, but I think draining the excess in the slotted spoon is enough, since the custard will cover everything anyway.

5. Repeat until you’ve cooked all the meringue, if you don’t have room on the platter, you can stack the cooked meringue a bit, its not a problem if they are cooked, they get firm and can hold some weight.
6. Now use the remaining milk (that you used to cook the meringue) and weigh it, add more milk so that the total is about 500ml of milk, put it back on the heat, add 100gr of sugar, you want the milk to be very hot but not boiling.
7. While the milk heats up, whisk the egg yolks until smooth, after whisking its best to use a strainer to make sure the egg yolk is super smooth.
8. When the milk is hot, pour spoonfuls of the milk into the bowl with the whisked egg yolks, always whisking, you do this to heat the yolks and prevent them from coagulating (you want the yolks heated slowly, or else you might create scrambled eggs), when the liquid with yolks is very hot, pour everything back into the remaining milk that is on the stovetop, stir constantly.
9. Let the mixture cook until the mixture starts to get creamy (always stirring), note that sometimes it takes about 5 minutes, other times it can take up to 15 minutes, but you’ll notice it immediately when it starts to thicken, then you can take it out immediately from the heat if you want a more liquid custard, or you can let it cook for about 1 more minute to thicken a bit more.
10. When the custard is good, remove it from the heat and let it cool down, pour it over the egg whites when it’s close to room temperature, put all of it in the fridge and serve the farófias cold, farófias if well made will be firm and last well for about 3 days in the fridge, enjoy!