In an effort to, um, encourage the older two children in their bathroom-cleaning endeavors this summer, I decided on a combination threat/bribe.
The threat is that if they don't do their bathroom chore, they don't get Sunday dessert.
The bribe is that whoever is on toilet-cleaning duty (they trade off every week) gets to choose what the Sunday dessert is.
This is how I found myself making Floating Islands last weekend.
There is, of course, a backstory to this, because Floating Islands is not a dessert your average 11-year-old would think of on his own. Or even your average 21st-century person, of any age. It is a very old-fashioned dessert. Which is why A. knew about it.
See, when A. was growing up, Floating Islands was a kind of a running joke in his house. The rich older relatives of more-affluent times in his father's family were served Floating Islands by their servants. And so, when A. was a kid, the joke was that the only proper dessert was Floating Islands.
The MiL actually made it a few times, so A. has had it. And he, in turn, has told that story and the joke to our children.
So when Cubby was presented with the opportunity to choose any dessert at all, he chose something he knew I would never otherwise make: Floating Islands.
I, of course, have never made this, nor eaten it. And it's not in any of my cookbooks. So I looked up recipes online, and decided to play it safe with a Julia Child recipe for it, via this blog.
It's a very detailed recipe, which I appreciated, because this recipe is a complete pain to actually make. The prep time for it is two hours.
Yeah.
I split it up over two days. So on Saturday, I made the creme anglais, which is a very thin vanilla-flavored custard. That's what the "islands" float in.
The "islands" are meringues. In this recipe, the meringue is baked, all in one big pan. I've never made meringue before. It was kind of fun how it puffed up in the oven.
7 comments:
The floating islands do look tasty. I don't know if I'll take the time to make them or not.
Linda
I made them. Once. Enough for a lifetime.
I have a recipe for them in my first book, sourced from a cookbook from the 1800s. Looks much easier and probably less sweet.
Ingredients
1 qt milk
4 eggs, whites and yolks separated
1 cup sugar
1 tsp cornstarch
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
Directions
Put the milk on the stove and heat to nearly the boiling point. Whip whites of the eggs to a stiff froth and drop them by spoonfuls into the hot milk for a few minutes to cook. With a skimmer remove these “islands” to a plate. Beat the yolks of the egg with sugar, salt and cornstarch. Stir into the milk until it boils. Remove from heat, add salt and cool. Turn into a glass dish and lay the islands on top of the custard. Serve cold.
Don't let my son see this recipe. We're already making a cake for his birthday that he found in a culinary textbook he found at the library. Yes, we do have to weigh the egg yolks. It has many, many steps spread out over a couple of days, but it does look good, and it's decorated with fresh fruit. I look at all of it as an excuse to drink coffee; the sweeter the dessert, the more coffee needed.
BTW, yours looks very lovely. I have fun making Meals or Desserts that everybody gets so excited about.
Linda: Try the recipe Drew posted below. It looks much less insane.
Kit: Ha. My thoughts exactly.
Drew: Yeah, that looks more like a "housewife" recipe, rather than a crazy French recipe. Much simpler, and no egg yolks left over.
Jody: Don't let MY son see that culinary textbook. I don't like separating eggs, but I really draw the line at weighing ingredients, even though I know that all Real Cooks weigh things to measure accurately. To the point where I don't even own a scale. :-)
The whole floating island thing offers a lesson in cooking. Drew's recipe is sensible and basic, but, gosh, the meringues without any sugar would be a totally tasteless, especially made with modern factory eggs. (It's interesting to me that my neighbors remark that my chickens' eggs have whites with flavor--because they live outdoors, I suppose. Chickens, not neighbors.) Adding a bit of sweetness to the poached meringues does make sense, so that bit of culinary evolution suggests some thoughtful cooks down the line. But what is really clear is that sweetness is definitely a matter of taste, and one can vary sugar exactly as one likes. Drew's recipe has 1/4 cup sugar to 1 cup of milk--and that actually sounds like plenty. I regularly find that if I follow a recipe for a dessert, it is too sweet. If I cut the sugar in half, I prefer the flavor. Cutting sugar is sensible--and if something ends up not sweet enough, just chalk it up to experience. And have a bowl of ice cream.
My wife's rule for desserts is there's no problem - either in taste or appearance - that can't be fixed by dusting it with powdered sugar.
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