Adapted from Alpine Cooking; Recipes and Stories from Europe's Grand Mountaintops by Meredith Erickson There are a variety of ways to make Salzburger Nockerl. This one is from the Bärenwirt Tavern in Salzburg. If you're the kind of person that likes desserts heavy on the meringue, like Île Flottante or Floating Islands, this dessert is for you. Europeans don't traditionally use vanilla extract, as Americans do, preferring to either use vanilla beans or vanilla sugar, which is sold in little packets. I do have a little jar of sugar that I stick used (rinsed and dried) vanilla beans in, which worked fine. Meredith says you can scrape the seeds from one vanilla bean into the 1/2 cup (100G) of superfine sugar and let it infuse a few days. I tried making this with pure vanilla extract, and it worked fine. Feel free to use that, or vanilla bean paste. Superfine sugar is sometimes called "baker's sugar" (in France, it's called sucre en poudre). You can make your own by whizzing granulated sugar a few times in a food processor or mini-chopper until the granules are quite fine, which'll just take a few pulses. Lastly, I skipped adding milk (1/2 cup, 125ml), which the original recipe said to pour over the jam, before topping with the meringue prior to baking. I found it a little too liquidy. Also I baked mine longer than the 9 minutes indicated by the original recipe. I don't mind runny soufflés, but mine was cooked to my liking at around the 13 to 14-minute mark.
