Dessert Atlas · Dessert
Baked Alaska
- Advanced
- 2 h
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, toasted, nutty warmth throughout.
Ingredients
- 1 disc of sponge or pound cake, 20cm, brushed with a little liqueur or syrup
- 1L ice cream: one flavor or layered in a bowl-mold (the dome is traditional); FROZEN ROCK-HARD, 24 h
- Italian meringue: 4 egg whites, 220g sugar cooked to 118°C with 60ml water, whipped in as syrup until stiff, glossy and cool
- A piping bag or palette knife for the meringue armor: full coverage, no gaps; the meringue is the insulation
- A 240°C oven for 3–4 minutes, or a torch, or (for the tableside legend) warmed rum and a match
Equipment
Piping bag · Sheet pan · Torch
The skills inside
The words inside
Frozen Dessert Machines: Churners & PacojetKnife Care & the Cutting Board Question
Allergen screen
Found: dairy · egg · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Mold the ice cream in a bowl lined with film; freeze solid; unmold onto the cake disc; back into the freezer.
- Make the Italian meringue: the hot syrup cooks the whites, which is what lets the dessert survive the oven.
- Work fast: armor the entire dome and cake edge in thick meringue swoops, sealing to the tray; freeze again 1 h (or up to 2 days, the make-ahead secret). 60 min
- Blast at 240°C 3–4 min until the peaks bronze, or torch it, and serve immediately, cutting with a hot knife: hot toasted shell, frozen heart, cake foundation, all in one slice. 4 min
How it should come out
- The go/no-go at the oven door: the meringue held a straight peak off the whisk and the bowl was cool to the palm before any of it went on, and the assembled dome is hard to a knuckle-rap everywhere, base included. A dome that gives anywhere goes back to the freezer, not into the oven.
- Sealed all round: at least 2cm of meringue over the dome, covering the cake edge and meeting the tray, with no window of ice cream showing and no crack at the base.
- Peaks bronzed with the valleys still cream-white after 3 to 4 minutes; an evenly tanned dome means it stayed in and the heat reached the ice cream.
- Cut with a hot knife, the face shows three bands with hard borders: hot toasted shell, ice cream holding its own edge, cake beneath. A melted ring under the meringue and the oven won.
- No beads of syrup on the meringue and no liquid on the plate a minute after service, and the cake base is still dry enough to lift the slice on a spatula.
Where it goes wrong The meringue goes onto ice cream that has softened at the surface, or goes on still warm from the syrup: the two meet as slush, the dome slides and the seal splits at the base, and the slice arrives as cream soup under browned foam.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Sauternes
- Also Right
- Demi-sec Champagne
- From the Taps
- Belgian tripel
- Zero-Proof
- Jasmine tea
The sweetness rule is absolute: the pour must be sweeter than the plate, and acid keeps it from cloying.
Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.