Floating Islands

Contestants on this year's Great British Bake Off were asked to make floating islands, a recipe I recently came across in the Macmillan Little Book of Treats. The charity cookbook features recipes from a selection of celebrities, some chefs and some TV personalities, as well as a handful of amateur food bloggers - including me!

Dolly Parton submitted a recipe called Floating Islands in the Stream (get it?) and I decided to try making it. This particular version is served in a chocolate custard. The recipe also gives instructions to make a chocolate sauce to drizzle over the top but I decided against making that due to lack of time.

To serve 6, you need:

For the chocolate custard:

4 egg yolks

150g caster sugar

pinch of salt

500ml milk

60ml double cream

125g dark chocolate, melted

2 tsp vanilla flavouring

meringue islands:

4 egg whites

170g caster sugar

Whisk the egg yolks, sugar and salt for the chocolate custard until creamy - I used my KitchenAid to do the job.

Next, stir in the milk and cream.

Cook in a saucepan over a low heat for 5-8 minutes, stirring constantly until the custard is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Stir in the melted chocolate and vanilla and put in a bowl in the fridge for half an hour.

To make the meringue, beat the egg whites until stiff then beat in the sugar. At the same time, bring a large pan of water to simmering point. I found it easiest to do this in a deep frying pan; the water doesn't need to be deep but you need a lot of surface space.

This is the tricky bit that some of the contestants in the Great British Bake Off struggled with, and I can see why! Using a large spoon, scoop up the meringue in an egg shape (or as much as you can manage) and gently slide into the simmering water. Poach the meringues for two minutes on each side then remove with a slotted spoon and drain on kitchen paper.

Take the custard from the fridge and pour into pudding bowls - fairly large, flattish bowls are good for this. Place a couple of the islands on top so they float in the stream.

Personally I find custard quite difficult to make and today was no exception, and it is hard to get the meringue into the pan of water without them falling apart - though they did poach nicely when they were in the water!

I'm sending this to Calendar Cakes, hosted by Rachel at Dollybakes and Laura at Laura Loves Cakes. They have quite a broad theme this month: "if it makes you happy", which Rachel explains can include many things, including trying something for the first time. Trying new and challenging recipes like this one definitely makes me happy!

Macmillan World's Biggest Coffee Morning and Little Book of Treats

Macmillan Cancer Support held its World's Biggest Coffee Morning last Friday; the organisation encouraged individuals, companies, schools and community groups to hold a coffee morning and bake sale on the same day to raise money for the cancer charity. I think it's a great cause and we had a bake sale at work - I work in an office with a couple of hundred people, and even though only a tiny percentage bakes cakes, almost everyone buys one or makes a donation to the charity.

Macmillan publishes a recipe book in advance of the coffee morning event, featuring recipes from celebrity chefs and a handful of amateur bakers as well, called the Little Book of Treats. I was exceptionally pleased  to find out my recipe had been selected to appear in the book. It's not every day you get a recipe published in the same book as Mary Berry!

I submitted a recipe via a competition on the Baking Mad website earlier this year and decided to enter my toffee popcorn cupcakes - you can see the recipe here. They consist of toffee cupcakes (with toffee chunks), toffee frosting, and popcorn on top drizzled with toffee sauce, and I used cupcake wrappers that look like retro popcorn buckets.

There are recipes in the book from Hugh Bonneville, Mich Turner, Lisa Riley, Tom Parker Bowles, Rachel Khoo, Gwyneth Paltrow, Dolly Parton, Gizzi Erskine, Eric Lanlard, Dame Maggie Smith, former Great British Bake Off contestant Ruth Clemens, Antonio Carluccio (who writes the foreword to the book) and of course Mary Berry. I still can't quite believe my recipe is in the same book as all of them!

The other bloggers whose recipes were chosen are: Sarah Wilson of heylittlecupcake.co.uk; Karen Burns Booth of lavenderandlovage.com and Kate Harries of whatkatebaked.com,  (both of whom I know as the co-host of Tea Time Treats, a monthly blogging challenge I enter - and in turn they regularly enter my challenge Alphabakes); Rebecca Norris of florencefinds.com; Nicola Flowers from cherrapeno.com, and Charlotte (Lottie) Verrill of lottiesworldofcakesandbakes.eu (another Alphabakes entrant who is familiar to me, and I love her website).

All the recipes look brilliant and this is a great little book; you can pick it up exclusively in Marks & Spencer for a suggested donation of £4, but only until tomorrow (October 2nd). In fact this is the only downside to the whole thing - the book has been on sale since September 26, but Macmillan and Baking Mad failed to tell me my recipe had been selected - which they have since admitted was an oversight - so I only found out about it from someone on Twitter a couple of days ago! Needless to say I rushed out and bought several copies, but it would have been nice to know in advance of the big coffee morning event.

And what did I make for the bake sale at work? Well, I will post the recipes as soon as I have time but here's a sneak preview of my chocolate and peanut butter and white chocolate and star anise cupcakes. The icing didn't quite turn out as I'd hoped so perhaps there is some way to go before I truly am on a par with the other bakers in this book!