After plating and decorating your beautiful dessert with sauces and/or powdered sugar, learn how to elevate your creation to a multi-dimensional experience using the thinnest of cookies known as wafer cookies or tuiles. Tuile is the French word for “roof tile”. Add texture and crunch to the plate by learning how to make a simple wafer cookie that is most versatile in how it can be shaped, and then placed on top of your dessert.
Wafer Cookies
Makes about 18 thin wafer cookies
2 large egg whites
½ cup superfine sugar
1/3 cup cake flour
2 tablespoons melted butter
- Preheat the oven to 350° F.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer using the paddle attachment, blend the egg whites and sugar together on medium speed until just foamy.
- On low speed, add flour and melted butter.
- On a parchment-lined or silicone mat-lined sheet pan place a teaspoonful of batter.
- Using a small spoon or offset spatula, spread the batter into a three-inch circle.
- Repeat the above procedure with more batter leaving a space around each circle.
- When the sheet pan is covered with circles of batter, bake them for 6-9 minutes or until the cookies are light brown around the edges.
- After baking, allow the cookies to cool and crisp up to form circular wafer cookies. Or when still warm, you can roll each cookie around the handle of a greased wooden spoon to make a pirouette. As the cookie cools gently slide it off the handle and place it onto a plate. Repeat with the remaining cookies.
- If the cookies cool and become hard before you can roll them, return the sheet pan to the oven to soften them for a few seconds.
- Repeat the above procedure making circular cookies or pirouettes, until all of the batter is used up.