Floating Island Dessert
on Friday, 21 February 2020.
Posted in French Friday, Provence
Here is an old fashioned French dessert which has only a few ingredients. It consists of a fluffy steamed meringue which floats on a bed of light vanilla custard. This is traditionally topped with caramel sauce, roasted almonds and berries.
Ingredients
Ingredients
Custard
- 4 egg yolks
- 480 gr milk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract or 1 vanilla pod
- 100 gr sugar
Meringue
- 4 egg whites
- 100 gr sugar
Method
Method
Custard
- Put milk and vanilla into a saucepan, and on medium heat, bring the milk to a boil, as soon as it comes to the boil, remove and set aside to cool off a bit.
- In a bowl, beat the yolks and sugar till light and creamy. Strain the milk into the egg yolk mixture, put it onto a medium heat, and stir constantly for about 4 or 5 minutes till consistency is slightly thick. Set aside to cool completely. Put it in the fridge till cold.
Meringue
- Have a saucepan of boiling water (about a litre) sitting on the stove.
- Beat the egg whites for about a minute before adding the sugar in two lots. When the mixture is thick, take an ice cream scoop and place scoops of meringue mixture into the boiling water. Cook for a minute on each side, then scoop the little white clouds of meringue out with a slotted spoon, placing them onto paper towel to drain.
- To serve these, you can either have them in a large dish for people to help themselves, or you can dish them up individually.
- Put some custard on the bottom of the bowl, place the poached meringues onto the custard, and then arrange the fruit and roasted almonds on top. If you have caramel sauce, drizzle it over the top as well. Because this is so sweet, I found that raspberries were the best fruit to use.
