Tag: Challenge

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The Floating Island Challenge

Sophia Wells

I apologize for my two week long absence. Things have been a tad bit crazy, but believe me I have not gone these two weeks without baking. The week after I returned from visiting my family in Indiana, Roydon came home early from work and look absolutely horrible with a high fever, body aches, and fatigue.  He went straight to bed for a solid three days to recover and I happily played nurse for him. This included making another batch of English Muffins (I’m telling you, they are so fun and yummy!) as well as attempting to make French Onion Soup. I have always loved French Onion Soup with its saltiness and a healthy coating of Guyere cheese on top. What better way to help my patient recover? I found the recipe in a cookbook that I received from my parents during my Bridal Shower called The Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook. These have some of the scientifically best recipes ever! Including a Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe that turns out as good as bakery quality every single time!  I also made Chicken Noodle Soup and Roydon’s favorite Red Curry Coconut Chicken Soup. It was a week of soups.

I think I enjoyed having Roydon home from work a little too much, especially considering how miserable he was.  However, isn’t this what every wife lives for? I absolutely loved providing care and nourishment to my husband while he recovered.

A week later, Roydon was in Michigan for his job and I was busy with my various duties at the school where I work. Which left me very little energy to attempt the Floating Islands. However, this week I am on Spring Break which means I have no excuse to prolong the procrastination any longer.

They really look so delicate. The actual meringue itself, cooked right through, evenly…It really is a difficult technical bake. I think they’ll have trouble with that meringue.” Mary Berry, Season 2 Episode 3

Baking to me is a social event. It should be done with others. If you have kids, it’s a lesson in science, math, and a whole ton of patience. With that in mind, I brought Roydon in the kitchen to actively assist me in this bizarre dessert.

More egg whites. Seriously? Roydon and I watched this episode of The Great British Baking Show, keeping an eye on how the bakers poached their meringues. Roydon didn’t speak the entire time, and with a quick glance over to him I saw his eyes grow wider and wider in disbelief as to what we will be shortly attempting. I tried to assure him that it’ll be a piece of cake, but I wasn’t too sure about it myself.

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We got to work prepping all of our materials. Roydon used a food processor to grind up our normal size grains of sugar into more fine grains and I worked on separated the six eggs.

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Once that was all finished, I poured the egg whites into the bowl of my KitchenAid Mixer and got to work whipping them up. Once stiff peaks were achieved, we added a tablespoon of sugar at a time. Each time restoring the egg whites to its stiff peaks.

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In this episode, we had noticed that a method the bakers used to check if their meringues were stiff enough was by slowly turning the bowl upside down. If they were stiff enough, they would remain in the bowl. If they weren’t…Well, let’s just say, I really hoped they were.

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With the meringues finished, we combined the whole milk and the heavy whipping cream (or as they call it “double cream”) in a deep sided frying pan on a very low heat until it was simmering.

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Before placing in the pan to be poached, the meringues needed to be shaped by using two tablespoons. This was no easy task, the meringues kept sticking to the spoon doing the shaping and would reattach itself to the meringue blob I was trying to shape. When I was somewhat satisfied with the shape, I slowly plopped each of them in the pan and covered it with a lid.

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The recipe said that if the milk ends up boiling, the meringues would puff up instantly only to later deflate. So, you had to be careful not to allow the milk to boil. Easier said than done. The stove top was on the lowest heat possible without turning it off and the milk still ended up boiling slightly. There was a moment of panic on my part when I took the lid off and found a giant mass of meringues plotting to take over the world. With a spoon, one by one I placed the blobs of poached meringues on a cooling rack. Once separated from each other, the blobs seemed to realize that world domination was impossible, and so they deflated slightly.

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The next step was to create the Crème Anglaise. We placed the egg yolks in the mixer combined with some sugar and whisked it up until it was fluffy and pale. Before combing the whipped yolks with the poaching milk, we poured the milk through a strainer to remove any chunky bits of meringue. Once combined, the crème was placed back on the stove at a low heat until it was a bit thicker.

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Now for the spun sugar. Spun sugar seems a lot more daunting then it actually turned out to be. Basically, you pour some sugar in a stainless steel pot and cook on the stovetop at a medium heat. Here’s the challenge: do not stir the sugar. This was surprising difficult for me. Just let the sugar do its thing.

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Once the sugar had completely melted and looked a beautiful dark golden brown. We took it off the heat and allowed it to cool slightly. Then, Roydon used a fork to dip it in the sugar and flick it back and forth over a greased rolling pin. The thing we found was how quickly the sugar cooled. Before long, the remainder of the sugar was stuck in the pan. Luckily, we had enough to decorate our Floating Islands.

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The spun sugar really did wonders to make the entire thing look so attractive. Before diving in to eat it, however, we had to make sure all of the strands of sugar was wiped off the counter and swept off the floor. It was definitely a messy recipe.

Finally, we were able to try the Floating Islands. I do have to say that I’m not generally a fan of meringue. I made Roydon a Pavlova for his Birthday and couldn’t get over the texture of it. However, in terms of Floating Islands, the combination of the crème anglaise, the egg taste of the meringue, and the caramel crunch of the spun sugar was absolutely a surprise. I especially loved the crème anglaise. I could have poured the entire pan in a mug and just drank the entire thing.

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As much as we enjoyed the final product, Roydon and I both decided it was a lot of work for the outcome and so will probably never make it again. Except, I definitely can see myself making some more spun sugar to decorate cakes in the future…

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Floating Islands with Spun Sugar

Recipe courtesy of The Great British Baking Show

Ingredients

For the crème anglaise

300ml/10 ½ fl oz whole milk

300ml/10 ½ fl oz double cream

1 tsp vanilla bean paste

6 free-range eggs, yolks only

100g/3 ½ oz caster sugar

For the Meringues

6 free-range eggs, whites only

150g/5 ½ oz caster sugar

For the spun sugar

100g/3 ½ oz caster sugar

Directions

1. To prepare the poaching liquid (and what will become the crème anglaise), heat the milk and cream in a large lidded pan or deep-sided frying pan. Stir in the vanilla bean paste and bring to a simmer over a low heat.
2. For the meringues, in a large grease-free bowl use an electric hand whisk to whisk the egg whites together on fast speed, until stiff peaks form when the whisk is removed. Add one tablespoon of the sugar to the egg whites and continue to whisk until the mixture comes back to stiff peaks. Keep adding sugar one tablespoons at a time until 150g/5 ½ oz has been used, and the meringue is thick and glossy.
3. Using two large tablespoons or serving spoons dipped in cold water, shape six large quenelles from the meringue mixture and place in the poaching liquid, over a very low heat for about 9-10 minutes, flipping the quenelles halfway through. Cover the pan with a lid while poaching. Make sure the poaching liquid doesn’t boil or the meringues will puff up then collapse.
4. When the quenelles are really puffed up and cooked, transfer them to a wire rack to drain.
5. For the crème anglaise, pass the poaching milk through a sieve into a large jug.
6. In a large bowl, whisk the egg yolks and caster sugar together until pale and fluffy. Pour over the warm poaching milk. Whisking continuously. Pour the mixture into a clean heavy-based pan and cook over a very low heat for 3-4 minutes stirring continuously until smooth and thick enough to coat the back of the spoon. Remove from the heat and set aside.
7. For the spun sugar, melt the sugar, without stirring, in a small stainless steel pan over a medium heat. Grease a rolling pin or knife steel with oil. Take care as the sugar will be very hot. When it turns a dark golden-brown remove from the heat. Leave to cool slightly, then, using the back of a fork, flick the caramel backwards and forward over the rolling pin or knife steel. Gather the strands into rough ball shape and place on a sheet of parchment paper.
8. To serve, pour a little crème anglaise into each serving bowl and float a quenelle of meringue on top. Decorate the quenelle with a ball of spun sugar.

Next Challenge: English Custard Tarts

 

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The Cherry Cake Challenge

Sophia Wells

I thought I would be starting out with a nice and easy recipe. I mean, come on, it’s a cherry cake. How hard can it be? After finding and reading the appropriate recipe, I knew I was in for a treat.

the first step was to convert all of the measurements from grams to cups. I should probably invest in a food scale at some point if this ends up being a typical occurrence.

after that was done, I found a few items on the list that I had no idea what they were talking about. Red glacé cherries? Self raising flour? Caster sugar? Ground almonds? Little had I known before this challenge that the British folk tend to call things a little differently than us and may have products available to them that we Americans do not.

A quick couple of minutes on Google and I found The that the glacé cherries are the candied cherries found in fruitcake. Check. Self raising flour is not typically found in your average grocery store, but I had found a website that said for every cup of all-purpose flour to add 2 tsp of baking soda and 1/2 tsp of salt. sweet! Double check. Caster sugar, believe it or not, is super fine grain sugar. This is labeled as such on the bag. Easy peasy! Now…ground almonds…I will have to admit that I didn’t read the recipe closely enough and had assumed that it just said almonds…which I thought I had. I didn’t…so I skipped this step. I mean, c’mon, it only asked for 1 3/4 oz of the darn thing.

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Fun fact: British “large” egg is the equivalent to the American “extra large” egg. Who knew!?

It’s a great British classic, but it’s quite tricky to get absolutely right. Sometimes, the cherries all go to the bottom. So, they got to do the right preparation of the cherries…And also, if you do the icing too watery, it’ll run off. It’s got to just gently trickle down.”

~Mary Berry (Season 1, episode 1 Great British Baking Show)

The bakers were given two hours to complete the challenge.

The trickiest part in preparing the cake was to ensure that the cherries were completely dried. Otherwise, they will sink to the bottom. Of course, these type of cherries are swimming in a sickly sweet syrup and it didn’t go without a fight. When the cherries were dried to my satisfaction, they received a coating of 2 Tbsp of flour and then were gently folded into the batter. Crossing my fingers that they remained suspended as the cake baked.

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I set the timer for 35 minutes and plopped down in front of the oven to watch. The tension is real. I was nervous at this point because it didn’t seem like a lot of batter went into the bunt pan. I was hoping it rose more in the oven.

when the 35 minutes were up, I cautiously opened the oven. The middle part of the cake seemed to have risen more than the edges. The edges themselves were a rather darker brown than the rest of the cake. A toothpick confirmed that the bake was done.

Now it was the moment of truth; turning the cake out of the pan. I was happy that it slid out easily enough, however, the product was lacking in…height. It rose some but not enough. I had only to let it cool before applying the icing. The hard part was over! Or so I thought…

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“Icing sugar” is British for “powdered sugar” or “confectioners sugar”. When I went to the store the previous day, I was confident that I had enough sugar for the icing. All I needed was lemon juice. That all proved to be wrong when I had used the last of the sugar and the icing was still watery and not the correct pure white color. However, I found a substitute! With help from my husband, we pulsed 1 cup of regular sugar with 1 tsp of cornstarch until it resembled powdered sugar. I added a couple more Tbsps of sugar until I assumed it was ready to be drizzled on the cake.

Drizzle it did…all the way down the sides of the cake and into the sink.the icing that stayed on the cake resembled a slightly white glaze. Which is not at all attractive. The solution? Make more icing and try to cover up the first layer. The second round of icing was thicker, but still too runny. Mary Berry would be so disappointed…

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One last hope remained of an otherwise failed challenge: Were the cherries suspended in the cake?

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No…they were not. The blasted things all sank to the bottom of the bunt pan.

The plus side is that the cake itself was pretty tasty, if not super sweet.

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Challenge #1 Mary Berry’s Cherry Cake: Fail

Time: 4 hours

Next Challenge: Florentines

Give this challenge a try! Send me pics of your finished products on my Instagram (@what_a_piece_of_cake) or on my Facebook page Piece of Cake. 

Mary Berry’s Cherry Cake

Preparation time

less than 30 mins

Cooking time

30 mins to 1 hour

Serves

Serves 10-12

Ingredients

For the decoration

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4. Grease a 23cm/9in bundt tin or savarin mold with butter.

  2. Cut the cherries into quarters. Set aside five of the quartered cherries for the decoration later. Put the rest of the quartered cherries in a sieve and rinse under running water. Drain well then dry thoroughly on kitchen paper and toss in two tablespoons of the flour.

  3. Measure all the remaining ingredients into a large bowl and beat well for two minutes to mix thoroughly. Lightly fold in the cherries. Turn into the prepared tin.

  4. Bake in the preheated oven for 35-40 minutes until well risen, golden-brown and a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes then turn out and cool on a wire rack.

  5. For the icing, mix the icing sugar together with the lemon juice to a thick paste. Drizzle over the cooled cake using the back of a spoon, sprinkle over the toasted almonds and reserved cherries.