Braso de Mercedes - Meringue-Custard Roulade

Braso de Mercedes

Brazo de Mercedes is a classic and popular Filipino dessert that I keep on dreaming to bake one day. Brazo de Mercedes can be translated to “Mercedes Arms” perhaps because of its elongated and arm like appearance. This dessert is a roulade made of meringue sheet with a yema “yolk” filling. It is mostly made of eggs and sugar, sugar and more sugar!

Some people, like my little Andrei, prefer to eat the filling but some will eat the meringue as the filling can get quite sweet. As for me, well, I’ll have both to experience a pretty well-balanced sweetness of yolk filling and meringue with each bite. I really love how the meringue has that “melt in your mouth” quality and if you’re going to make this at home, you can always adjust the sweetness.

Now I must admit that it requires patience and will take more practice to make this dessert. But as you go along you will discover the techniques for the right mixture of the meringue and baking it without burning.

I know you can’t resist to try it yourself, so let’s start baking.

What you will need:

Meringue:

10 pieces of egg whites

1 tsp of cream of tartar
1 tsp of vanilla extract
1 cup of sugar
Wax paper or parchment paper (so that your meringue won’t stick to the pan or tray)

Yolk Filling:

10 pieces of egg yolks

1 cup or 200g of condensed milk
1 tsp vanilla extract

What you need to do:

Preparing the Meringue Roll
1. In a large mixing bowl, combine the cream of tartar and egg whites and beat in electric mixer at high speed until soft peaks form. Gradually add sugar while beating until mixture rises. Switch off the mixer.

2. Brush the baking tray with oil and line tray with wax paper. Brush the wax paper with oil so that the meringue won’t stick to it.

3. Gently pour the egg white mixture into the tray using a spatula. Make sure it is evenly distributed. The neatness of the ends doesn't matter as they will be cut off. You can create lines on the meringue by running a fork or serrated knife on top.

4. Bake at 350 degrees F for 30-35 minutes or until the top of the meringue is lightly browned. Insert a toothpick in the middle and make sure no meringue will stick to it.

Preparing the Yolk Filling

1. In a heatproof bowl combine condensed milk, vanilla, and egg yolks.

2. Set it over a saucepan of simmering water, and whisk until thick, about 10-11 minutes (longer will make for a very thick custard).

3. Take it off the heat and set aside.

Preparing the Brazo de Mercedes
1. Take meringue out from oven once baked and set aside to cool.

2. Loosen roll from edges of pan with spatula and dust the top of the meringue with icing sugar. Cover it with baking paper. Place a clean cookie tray on top of the baking paper and flip the meringue.

3. Carefully peel off the baking paper. Spread the custard filling over half of the meringue and then begin to gently roll the meringue from end to end.

4. Hopefully, you should end up with something that looks like this:

Notes:

- To have a variation of taste, you may include ½ tsp of coffee to the yolk filling.
- Grease your baking paper well before you pour the meringue mix so that no bits of paper will stuck to the meringue.
- If you don’t have another tray to assist with flipping the meringue, you can also use a clean kitchen towel or cacha cloth. Place a large clean kitchen towel on a clean, large flat surface. Cover the kitchen towel with baking paper then gently flip the meringue on top of the baking paper.
- This dessert doesn’t keep for very long and will begin to shrink and might even collapse so consume on the same day or refrigerate and finish the next day.