Technical Challenge 2: Floating Islands

You wait eight weeks for a technical challenge and then two come along at once! You will remember at the beginning of this years GBBO I said that I wanted to make all the technical bakes? In the same week? Yeah, failed miserably on the latter but I'm still determined to make them all. This weekend I was nursing my husband after a leg operation (nothing serious but he couldn't get around very well so I had to be on hand) and so had a bit of time on my hands. I made two of the technicals, more on the second one later.
Floating islands or Îles Flotante if you are being all French about it was the week three technical. Poached meringues in a creme anglaise with spun sugar on top, easy. I had all the ingredients (eggs, sugar, cream, milk, vanilla bean paste) so I decided to give them a go on Saturday, we could have them for our dessert (a treat for the wounded husband).
Making meringue is ok, done that before. My first challenge was shaping them into quenelles, never done that before. I have seen it done so I made my best attempt, they weren't the smoothest or the shapliest but they did the job. The next hurdle was the poaching. It said to poach over a very low heat and make sure not to let the poaching liquid boil. I put it on the lowest heat but it still boiled and the meringue quenelles puffed up (it was pretty impressive) so I took the pan off the flame, hovering over it until the nine minutes were up. I scooped them out of the liquid and left them to drain.

Now for the creme anglaise, another first. But I have been reading about it and the pitfalls, not heating it to much etc. The poaching liquid is sieved to get rid of any rogue meringue. I beat the egg yolks and sugar until they were pale and fluffy and added the poaching liquid, whisking all the while, and put it in a clean saucepan over a low heat. I cooked it for about three minutes I think, until it reached the right consistency, i.e. coating the back of the spoon and all smooth and silky. I left everything to cool and moved on to the spun sugar (are you kidding me!).
This was the hardest bit of this challenge, another first, but also it's VERY HOT sugar that you are playing with so a bit daunting. I managed to get something that looked ok, but it was really difficult to move it fast enough over the rolling pin to get the very thin strands. There were lots of blobs of sugar rather than gossamer strands of sugar! But I got enough to make sort of balls of sugar to stick atop my floating islands, there was a lot of wastage!! And now to assemble.
Et Voila!

The meringues were light as a feather and my first attempt at creme anglaise wasn't half bad but I don't think it is one of my favourite desserts. However it did test many of my skills as well as my patience (spun sugar, why I oughtta.....)