The Struggle
Tuiles are a thin and crispy cookie or cracker that is used as a garnish. The most common type of tuile are cooked until the edges are golden brown and used as a garnish. Tuiles are made from a batter that is easily spread into a stencil or even piped into a spiral. One attribute of a tuile is the ability to mold it into a shape when it is hot out of the oven. These shapes can range from a simple bowl for ice cream to an impressive design for an amazing dessert. The tuile will harden soon after it cools and hold its shape. But how does it do this? When making a tuile the batter doesn’t cook all the way through, the edges will brown slightly but the center will stay a light yellowish white color. This less cooked part of the tuile is known as being “par-baked”. What “par-baked” means is the tuile is cooked through but the sugars haven’t browned yet. When those sugars brown is where you get that signature hard *snap* fresh out of the oven. This allows the tuile to be formed when its warmed and harden when its cooled. Cool, right? Well what could go wrong here. Humidity, that’s what could go wrong. That beautiful par-baked center is susceptible to soaking up the moisture in the air since it still contains moisture itself. So when you’re ready to plate that amazing dessert all your tuiles are the texture of soft tortillas. When something like this happens in the middle of a busy dinner party or a Saturday night rush it will crush your soul. So we weren’t surprised when Diane from Canada asked:
“How do I keep tuiles crisp in humid weather?”
Crispy for Days
EverCrisp is a simple ingredient that is used mostly with fried foods but can easily be added to any recipe that used fat, flour, and heat. EverCrisp’s main benefit is keeping fried foods crispy for longer, but we have also been able to find great uses for it in many baked goods and fry breads. EverCrisp is a soluble fiber from wheat that helps replace some of the protein in flour that loves holding onto that moisture, i.e. soggy tuiles.
For EverCrisp it is best to replace 20% of the flour in a current batter or breading recipe. This obviously isn’t a batter or breading but it is a recipe that contains the three components that make EverCrisp work (fat, flour, heat). For tuiles we suggest replacing 10% of the flour in the recipe to start as you don’t want to change the texture drastically. To use, replace 10% of the flour with EverCrisp and go about the recipe as if nothing has changed, do not adjust cook time or temperature.
A Helping Hand
While EverCrisp is a great ingredient for keeping foods crispy it is not impervious to moisture. It will do a good job of keeping the tuiles crispy for longer but not forever in a humid environment. So we still suggest keeping the crisp, perfectly shaped cookies in a sealed container in between uses.
But… This wouldn’t be a proper ask-a-chef if we didn’t have a Billy Mays style “That’s not all”! A moisture absorbing silica gel packet, inside the airtight container, with tuiles enhanced with EverCrisp is sure to prevent any soul from being crushed due to a wilted tuile.
