If you’ve never heard of them tuiles are light French pastries (basically cookies) that have a distinct curved shape. They’re pretty easy to make with only six ingredients and they taste great with ice cream or a large glass of milk.
Since these cookies aren’t very familiar to many, below I have some step-by-step pictures, showing exactly what kind of texture the batter should be. Along with the recipe, I have another cookbook review to share! This book is called French Roots by Jean-Pierre Moullé and Denise Lurton Moullé. As always, scroll to the bottom of the post to view the recipe.
At first I was a bit disappointed when I received this book. Immediately, when I opened the package that was mailed to me, I plunged through the pages, as I do with all cookbooks, marking down the recipes that I’ll put on my long list of things to make. When flipping through this book though, everything looked very plain and somewhat uninviting.
First of all, there was an extreme lack of pictures; I would say that well under half the recipes actually have photos accompanying them. This, for me, is a huge turn-off. I think of cookbooks as a work of art: there should be descriptive and alluring writing, recipes that actually yield good results, and a plethora of photos. I want photos that allow me to just stare at the book for hours, or, more practically, that allow me to properly create and assemble a dish. I want to see how the dish should be served and how big the portions should be. Photos, just one per recipe, can tell the reader all of this and more.
Once I got past this dilemma, I finally did mark down the recipes that I wanted to try, and there were quite a few that I was excited about. Of course, I really only took note of the desserts, which included chocolate soufflé, raspberry crumble, clafoutis, fig tart, chocolate ganache cake, warm apple feuilleté… the list goes on. Although a large majority of the recipes were not desserts, I simply didn’t feel quite as inspired by them. I mean, obviously, if you read my blog, you know that I basically only bake desserts, but occasionally I do like to experiment with other types of foods as well. The problem was that this book was very meat-intensive, and not really beef or chicken, but meats like eel, duck, oysters, mussels, lamb… I realize that this is a book on French recipes, and the authors probably just wanted to create something authentic, but I simply don’t think that I’ll be making any of those recipes any time soon.
Overall, unless you’re familiar with French cuisine and know that this is something you’re interested in, I’m not so sure that I would recommend this book. Yes, I was able to find a large handful of dessert recipes, but that wouldn’t be a good enough of an excuse for me to splurge $35 on this book. I definitely don’t hate this book, but I think I would need to be a more experienced chef to be able to make many of these recipes. (Just as a side note, I found some of the best pictures to put in this review, but most pages weren’t as colorful as these).
Now, onto the recipe. The batter will be very thin compared to cookie batter, and to demonstrate this I made a gif of how it should look:
After you’ve made the batter, form loose circles on your baking sheet and bake in your oven.
As soon as your goodies are out of the oven, place them on rolling pins to curl them.
Just as another side note, I found these cookies to be pretty thick for tuiles, so I adjusted the recipe to use less flour and create a more authentic result (the original called for 1/2 cup flour, but I cut out two tablespoons).
- 2 egg whites
- 6 tbsp sugar, plus extra to top
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/4 cup butter, melted
- 6 tbsp all-purpose flour
- pinch of salt
- Preheat oven to 350F. Prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- In a medium bowl, whip the egg whites and sugar with a whisk. Add the vanilla, melted butter, flour, and salt. The mixture should thin, but will create a thick ribbon as it falls.
- Scoop the batter and drop it onto the baking sheet. Try to spread the batter out slightly so that the cookies can be thin and round. Sprinkle the tops with sugar. Bake for about 8-10 minutes.
- As soon as the cookies are taken out of the oven, place them on top of a rolling pin to give them a curl. These French cookies are always curled, similarly to a Pringles chip.
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review.
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