Daring Bakers: Baked Alaska

The August 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Elissa of 17 and Baking. For the first time, The Daring Bakers partnered with Sugar High Fridays for a co-event and Elissa was the gracious hostess of both. Using the theme of beurre noisette, or browned butter, Elissa chose to challenge Daring Bakers to make a pound cake to be used in either a Baked Alaska or in Ice Cream Petit Fours. The sources for Elissa’s challenge were Gourmet magazine and David Lebovitz’s “The Perfect Scoop”.



Mandatory: Whether you make the Baked Alaska, the petit fours, or both, you must make the brown butter pound cake as written and the ice cream from scratch.



Since my daughter had just returned from an Alaskan cruise with her best friend, I chose to make the Baked Alaskas.


I made the brown butter first,



then make the brown butter pound cake.





I had intended to use the leftover cake to make a few petit fours, but, for some strange reason, the remaining cake disappeared before I could get back to it. Take that as a testament to how delicious the cake was.


I used some peach ice cream that was leftover from the July Daring Bakers challenge, as well as some chocolate ganache ice cream from another baking group. Hands down, the chocolate was the favorite.



For the meringue topping, I tried piping it and spreading it on with a spoon in a free-form design. It truly doesn't matter, they both taste the same, although the piped meringue has an edge on attractiveness. I used my handy little blowtorch to singe the meringue.



The end result was a lovely, delicious dessert that can be made ahead of time, making it a good candidate for entertaining.



Do stop by the Daring Kitchen to see all the daring creations and to get the recipe for the Brown Butter Cake.