Floating Island

This is a beauty—a large molded soft meringue on a custard sea. It is based on a great idea from chef-author Pierre Franey. Instead of fussing with forming and poaching individual meringues, you simply pile the beaten egg white mixture into a buttered kugelhopf pan or ring mold to make one large meringue. Then the meringue is oven-poached in a water bath.

Not only does this technique make for easy work