The egg beater

In the process of making a souffle pancake. You have to whisk the egg white till peaks form, i.e. when you turn the bowl over your head, nothing drips.

BACK in the days of my childhood, the "tock-tock-tock" sound of pounding chili and belacan was not all that common. At least not in my household. It was more the sound of "flop-flop-flop" -- that of the spring egg whisk working very hard.

My mum was into making cakes. We weren't always that successful. Our old oven was not able to heat up evenly. Often, you get only one side of the cake well risen. You had to open the oven door after a while to turn the cake around so that the other side would rise as well. This needed precise timing. Too early, the cake would just sink when you open the oven door.

More often than not, our cakes were lop sided. Cakes which never rose also happened once in a while. These were fed to the stray skinny black dog which foraged our dustbin regularly. He always lapped them down with great gusto.

I was the chief egg beater, a task I enjoyed very much. The whisk we had was a giant one with a huge spring and red wooden handle. You flop it up and down on the eggs and sugar mixture till they are white in colour and quite firm in texture. Then you sieve in the flour and melted butter.

These days, it is rather hard to find such a whisk. More common are the ones shown in the picture. Most people use the electric egg beater of course, which gets your egg whites to peak within minutes. 

But I don't own one and much prefer to hand whisk -- preferably one with a huge spring and red wooden handle.