VeggieMeatLicious: Baked Alaska

About Baked Alaska

Baked Alaska is a common dessert in the Western country while it is something still remain mysterious for most of the Asian, unlike the pudding of Black forest cake is well known in Asia.
Baked Alaska is a type of ice-cream cake, made by placing the ice cream in a pie dish or mole, lined with slices of sponge cake or Christmas pudding, covered with meringue. Baked Alaska is what the French call a Bombe, or a layered assemblage of ice cream and cake. Instead of being served cold, it is slathered with a thick layer of sweet meringue and baked until golden. In a bit of kitchen wizardry, the fluffy whipped egg whites insulate the ice cream and protect it from melting despite the oven's withering heat. However, as the modern day has created so many tools to help with the cooking technique, a torch is used today to burn the meringue without any effect to the ice-cream under the meringue, easier and faster, without lifting the dessert in and out from the oven or salamander.

Baked Alaska

Source

Tips for making Baked Alaska

Baked Alaska is a visually impressive ice-cream layer cake encased in a thick shell of browned meringue. A few steps could make in advance before the cooking, in order to produce a both beautiful and delicious Baked Alaska. First of all, make sure that the ice cream freeze enough, like about -18°C which is the best temperature for you to handling the hard ice cream, some more take some time to freeze the mold or dish which you are going to line your ice cream. Using a piping bag for the meringue with some decoration and watching the cake as it browns can make for a beautiful meringue shell.

At the old time, Making a Baked Alaska should be tricky when its meringue shell is being browned in the oven, as the temperature somehow is hard to control, it is best to freeze the ice-cream in the mold for overnight if you are going to set the dessert to brown in the oven. Otherwise, you could use a Torch or Salamander (broiler) to brown the meringue shell, it should be easier to do the burn job.

The meringue shell is the impressive appearance of the Baked Alaska, and as such, Piping bag should be considered to be used when comes to its decoration, the piping decoration could be awesome with a various nozzle which providing different shape, then burn the meringue shell evenly to improve the visuality.

Finally, not only a mold or pie dish could be used for the Baked Alaska, a dish like brownies, puff pastry, baked cookies or pie dough could also use as a dish for the Baked Alaska, since they are going to heat up in the oven when the meringue browning.

About the recipe

Baked Alaska recipe could be found at everywhere, this is one of it and it is as easy as like the others. We are going to use the commercial ice-cream and the meringue browning is using a torch, it saves a lot of energy, and a mom could do it for the Christmas party, all we need to do is to pre-freeze the mold or dish and bring the ice cream into the temperature -18°C.

Baked Alaska

Cook Time

Prep time: 20 min

Cook time: 20 min

Ready in: 40 min

Yields: 6 Pax

Ingredients

Enough to cover the ice-cream Flat Sponge/ Swiss Roll Sponge, Refer to the Message Swiss Roll
100grams Egg white, For the meringue
100grams Granulated sugar, For the meringue
Strawberry Ice Cream, from market
Vanilla Ice Cream, from market
Chocolate Ice Cream, from market

Let's burn

Mise en place: Freeze a Loaf Pans or dish overnight and also the ice-cream.
Stuffing the ice-cream into the loaf pan, layer by layer, flavor by flavor. Fill the ice cream firmly into the mold, press gently on its surface to let them stick together.
Wrap the surface of the ice cream with a cling film, then set the block of ice cream back into the freezer.
Making the meringue: Mix the egg white and half of the sugar in a bowl, whip them together to dilute the first batch of sugar, then add in the rest of the sugar and fluffy the egg white into the hard peak.
Set the meringue aside when it reaches hard peak. remove the ice cream from the loaf pan and remove part of the cling film, lie a piece of cut sponge cake on top, then turn it over to sit on the sponge.
Remove the entire cling film entirely and place another piece of sponge on the block of ice cream.
Apply meringue to every side of the block of ice cream, so that the sponge will stick on it. Line the sponge cake at every side of the block of ice cream.
Lay the dessert on a plate as we are not going to move it anymore.
Apply the meringue all over the sponge, then decorate with the meringue, pipe the meringue with the piping bag, decorate as you like.
Lid a Torch and begin to brown the surface of the meringue, but beware of over do.
You can set the entire dessert back to the freezer again if you are not going to serve now, or in the fridge.