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. 

English Muffins

The technical challenge from Great British Bake Off Week 2 was English Muffins. I found the recipe and got to making these. I haven't made muffins before but since I'm a regular bread baker I thought it looked fairly similar and I had all the ingredients. The recipe can be found here. 

The recipe basically requires adding everything in a bowl and mixing it together until you get a dough. You are supposed to turn the mixture out on to a floured surface and need it untill smooth and soft. This is the step I found the most challenging. From watching the program there were people saying you shouldn't add too much flour and just keep kneading until it all comes together. Well my dough was so sticky that it just stuck to my hands and surface, I had put some flour down but this was quickly absorbed by the dough. After around 10 minutes my dough was lovely and smooth and it was certainly a different texture, however, it was still stuck everywhere. In the end I decided to use flour to pull it off everything and make the dough more solid so I could form it into a ball and put in a bowl. In hindsight I probably could have just put the sticky dough in the bowl and pulled it off everything but it was what I did at the time. 

Before it had proving time

The dough is left to double in size, around 1 hour, and then turned out onto a surface and rolled to 1.5cm thick. I found this tricky because the dough kept shrinking back when I rolled it. I had to be quite persistent and then the first time I underestimated what 1.5cm was and had to start again. Eventually I got it to the right thickness, left it to rest for 15 minutes and cut out the muffins using the cutter. I left the muffins for 30minutes to prove. 

Cut and ready to prove

I cooked my muffins in a frying pan so I heated that up first. I made the mistake of not reading the recipe and had my pan on a high heat and not a low one. This meant that when I added the muffins they got burnt on one side as I was trying to cook them through. I realised and turned it down and then flipped them over. It's really difficult to know when these are cooked so I left them on there as long as I could and just guessed. 

Burnt on one side

The verdict: If this was my technical challenge I certainly wouldn't have come first, I made so many stupid mistakes throughout the recipe despite having all the details in front of me. The muffins were cooked through to the centre and I thought they tasted quite nice, if you ignore the burnt side. Overall it's not something I'd particularly like to make again, I may do if required but I'm not inspired by having done it once. I would give my muffins 5/10 and the recipe could have done with a little more help on certain issues, like the dough. 

Cooked all the way through

Angel Food Cake

Along with most of the country, I've been very excited by the arrival of the Great British Bake Off 2013 back on our screens. I've decided to try my hand at the technical challenges so each week I'll be searching out the recipes and giving them ago if at all practical. Week 1 we saw the cake week, this series the technical bake was Mary Berry's Angel Food Cake. One of my friends helpfully emailed me the recipe for this while I was waiting for it to go online. Thank you. You can now find the recipe here. 

This cake is different because it has no fat. Most of the structure comes from egg whites which have been well whisked and hold all of the air. I used my mixer for this, it's the first time I've used the balloon whisk attachments as I've never had enough mixture. This recipe called for 10 egg whites so I was delighted that this was certainly enough. The mixer worked really well and I got lovely peaks very quickly.

Whisked Egg Whites

The recipe calls for a slight whisking and then adding lemon, cream of tartar and some salt. I've never used cream of tartar but on reading the packet I could see why it was used. It helps the whites hold their structure and increases volume. The caster sugar is then added spoon by spoon. The final step is to fold in the flour, carefully, maintaining all the air in the egg whites. 

Flour Folded in

I didn't have the correct tin this time so I used a standard 8" tin. I carefully spooned all the mixture into this. It reached the rim of the tin so I hoped it wouldn't rise too much!! The cake rose the perfect amount just about holding inside the tin. 

Just about fits in the tin!!

Once cooked I turned my tin upside down and left it on a cooling rack. Since I wasn't using the right tin I didn't have the proper feet and my cake was right over the rim but it seemed to be ok, I think. 

Upside Down Cake

The recipe also calls for making lemon curd, with all the left over egg yolks. So I quickly whipped up a batch of this. It's very easy and just requires placing all the ingredients over a low heat and stirring until it's thickened. 

Making the Lemon Curd

Once cool I covered the cake in whipped up cream and drizzled some lemon curd onto it which had some passionfruit seeds stirred in. 

Ready to Eat

The verdict: I really enjoyed this cake, it was lovely and light and the lemon was so refreshing and cut through perfectly. I'm not sure what the passionfruit added and next time I'd omit these. This is a cake that I'd happily eat more slices of and probably will before it heads off to Gary's work tomorrow. Certainly a cake I'd love to make again and would try other fruity flavours. I would also like to try it in the proper tin. I didn't feel there was anything wrong with the bake this time but I'd like to compare and do it properly. Difficult to know what it should look like but I think it compared to those on GBBO, possibly a little squashed due to using the wrong tin upside down. I'd give this 9/10, that extra mark could be gained by removing the passionfruit and trying with the proper tin.