Floating Islands

Week 3 Great British Bake Off technical challenge was floating islands with spun sugar. I'm not keen on meringues but I wanted to keep up with my challenge of completing all of the technical challenges. I found the recipe here and it looked fairly straight forward. 

First step was to prepare the poaching liquid, I combined the milk and the cream and placed them in a saucepan. I didn't have an vanilla bean paste so I scrapped the seeds out of a pod instead. This was heating and left to simmer. 

Milk and Cream

Meanwhile I whipped up the egg whites until firm and added the caster sugar one spoonful at a time. I then continued whisking the mixture until it was forming stiff peaks. 

Stiff Egg Whites

Using spoons I shaped some islands and put them in the liquid, I then left them for 4 minutes to poach, with the lid on. After this I was supposed to turn them and poach for a further 5 minutes, however, the islands refused to turn over and kept balancing themselves back the same way. I had to cook them in batches as the pan wasn't big enough for more than 5. With the lid on the mixture started to boil so the first batch puffed up and then popped and lost their shape. 

Bad first batch

With the second bunch it went slightly better and by the 3rd 5 I managed to have the heat so low, lid off, that they finally looked better. 

Looking better

The Creme Anglaise was just a case of adding egg yolk and sugar to the already heated milk mixture. I didn't whisk the yolks as much as I should have so my custard was much yellower than it should have been but it thickened up nicely. The thickening stage took longer than I expected but it did get there and ended up a nice thickeness.

Yummy custard

I served one island with some custard. I didn't bother doing the spun custard with this as I wasn't that excited by the recipe as it was. 

Ready to eat

The verdict: I found the cooking stage of the islands challenging as I struggled to get the poaching mixture to the right temperature without it boiling. When I eventually got it right it was much easier. The custard tasted really nice, a little sweet for my taste, but this was needed to balance with the islands as I found these lacking in flavour and just really eggy. This isn't something I'd have again and it's not something I particularly enjoyed.  I'll have to see how Gary enjoys them. I give them 4/10. The 4 is only for the custard. 

Old-Fashioned Meringues

The first recipe from Annie Bell's Baking Bible meringue chapter is of course meringues!! I not really had success with meringues in the past, they tend to be too chewy, or under cooked, or over cooked. I decided to just go with the basics and see how I get on. It's a very standard recipe. 

3 egg whites

175g Caster sugar

Whisk up the egg whites until they are really stiff, the book says shaving foam consistency which I thought was a good description. 

Add the sugar one tablespoon at a time and whisk well. The mixture should be thick and glossy. This is where I've made mistakes in the past, not whisking the eggs enough. 

Ready to go in the oven

Spoon the mixture onto lined baking trays and bake in the oven, 140oC, for 2 hours. They should be crunchy on the outside and sound hollow when the bottom is tapped. 

Cooked meringue

The verdict: These meringues were very plain, however, they were very tasty. I don't usually like meringue, so I wouldn't eat many, but they just melted in the mouth with a very slight chewy centre. They would have been very nice with some fruit or cream. The book mentions how to make other flavours, this is something I'd be willing to try in the future.