There are two baked Alaska in this cookbook and I have been holding off, knowing I had to do it, eventually. I figured a late family Christmas function was the perfect opportunity. It was scary, using three litres of ice-cream, (that’s why I needed a crowd) and enigmatic, putting all this ice-cream covered with peaks of meringue into an oven at 240˚C!!! Eeeek. But I’d have to say it worked and the result was fascinating and delicious.
Our cat recently and very suddenly got sick and passed away. The house is so empty without her. It’s so sad. The only consolation is that she was 15 years old, so had lived a good life and a long life. Watching Bohemian Rhapsody last night, (great movie, one of the best ever!), it was very poignant watching Freddy carry on despite his diagnosis and listening to the lyrics of his songs, “who wants to live forever.” He was so creative, and very inspiring, especially how he carried on wanting to fulfill his dream of making music until he died. In his words, when he is singing to a large audience, “I’m exactly the person I was always meant to be. I’m not afraid of anything.” Oh to find that special place where we belong in the world. What a dream, come true. Making Baked Alaska might not fall into that category!
putting ice cream in layers into a dome shaped bowl 
Whisking the meringue and adding sugar syrup at 115 C 
piping the meringue onto the dome of ice cream sitting on the sponge
So first of all, what is a Baked Alaska. Well it’s actually a sponge base covered by a dome of ice cream, topped by meringue that is then
baked in the oven. The challenging concept was keeping it frozen, but needing to bake it at such a high temperature!!! I got around this by piping the meringue on, then kept it in the freezer, and baked it just before serving. It worked!
Gently mix 
Nice aerated mixture 
sponge done 🙂
I made the sponge by whisking the eggs and sugar, then folded in the self-raising flour, cocoa and butter. This was then baked and left to cool.
To make the ice-cream dome, I put softened vanilla ice-cream in the bottom of a bowl, then froze this. Then I added a layer of strawberry ice-cream and finally chocolate ice-cream on top. This stayed in the freezer while I made the meringue.
That involved whisking egg whites until stiff and then the tricky bit was melting the sugar and water and boiling this sugar syrup until it reached 115˚C. Unfortunately I took it too far and ended up with toffee!!! I had to think fast so added nuts and poured it over a Camembert to make a praline Camembert!!!! Mmmmmm, Yum I’m going all out for this party!
It’s pretty good!!!
To make this praline, put 225g caster sugar and 90 ml water into a heavy-based saucepan. Stir over medium heat until the sugar dissolves, then boil until the sugar syrup turns to a caramel colour. Add nuts and pour over the Camembert. Delicious treat.
I made another sugar syrup and got this to temperature without turning it to caramel, then poured this into the stiff egg whites and whisked for 15 minutes. The resulting meringue was like marshmallow, very good. I then unwrapped the ice cream dome and placed it flat side down onto the cold sponge in an oven proof dish.
As I didn’t have any gel paste colouring, I added food colouring to some meringue and wiped this inside the piping bag, red on one side and yellow on the other. Then placed the meringue in the bag and piped, and what a pretty result!!! I then popped this in the freezer until we were ready for pudding, when I baked it at 240˚C for 4 minutes. Spectacular. Everyone loved it and the best bit was it all got eaten up. Yay. And you asked for it, (or not!) but here’s the recipe http://www.pbs.org/food/recipes/marys-neopolitan-baked-alaska/
piped ready for baking 
Baked, the merigue went crispy and now it’s ready to eat!!!
