Baking Epiphanies

If you’re a foodie of any calibre at all you’ve heard that The Great David Lebovitz has just released a book called The Sweet Life in Paris. My advice on reading the book: do so in the privacy of your living room. Because if you happen to be eating potato chips at the same time? And you end up laughing so hard when least expected that you spray half chewed potato chips all over the place? Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

If you read the blog, you’ll be taken right in with the trademark prose, but the recipes are pretty great too. One of the first that caught my fancy was Ile Flottante, or Floating Island – a classic fancy French dessert that incorporates 3 very basic pastry elements that I find kind of intimidating: creme anglaise (or cooked custard), meringue, and caramel.

Regardless, I was so high from all the laughing that I got right over my fear and gathered up the very very simple ingredients required for this fancy dessert – eggs, sugar, milk and some vanilla. It’s pretty crazy what you can make with this stuff.

First – the creme anglaise.

Here’s what you need to know about creme anglaise. Do not, under any circumstance, try to make creme anglaise while you are simultaneously texting a friend who is asking you for advice on how to save his marriage. Okay? Bad idea. I couldn’t ignore his desperate text-cries-for-help so I had to tend to him. Meanwhile, my milk was warm and I had already tempered the yolks, and there was no way I could tactfully extricate myself from either the heavy duty texting or the demands of the time-sensitive custard.

So I offered some advice that I hoped would give him a 5 minute pause, and poured the entire yolk-milk-sugar mixture back into the pan to thicken. Instinctively I could tell, my body could tell, that this was the moment of truth. I was “stirring constantly” as advised and watching my custard like a hawk but my mind was on my friend (and terrified that I would hear the ping of my Blackberry before the custard was ready).

And, you know? It’s like the creme – which had yet to decide whether it would become anglaise or sweet scrambled eggs – knew that my focus was elsewhere. It took a split second, a split second, for it to go from luscious and silky to ugly and curdled.

Do not mess with the custard, okay? It needs your undivided attention. I made it the second time around (in a text-free environment) and like a madwoman kept testing my spatula for that telltale clean streak that says the custard is ready and immediately set the bowl on some ice. Mission accomplished.

The meringue was much easier and very forgiving. Nothing is more magical than watching measly every day egg whites turn into this lush, thick, glossy mass of fluffy goodness. We were going for a soft meringue here, hence we baked it in a water bath, then you flip it over onto a platter, so the clean white side is facing up, until you’re ready to serve.

Then it was time for the caramel – and it came out great!

Okay, I lied. I burned the caramel. At least I think I did, because it looked okay but tasted awful. It’s amazing what sugar will do with heat, but now I understand why chefs are so stressed out all the time, man. It literally takes a nanosecond for things to go from great to….burnt.