baked alaska part 1
i’ve been eyeing a baked alaska for some time now, wondering if i could pull it off. well, after i mentioned it to my dad for his bday, and him saying he was just thinking about that, i started in on one tonight.
first, a history lesson. the baked alaska was invented by charles ranhofer of delmonico’s restaurant in 1876 to honor the new american territory (alaska – derr). it’s also known as a norwegian omelette, both names coming from the low temps in the two spots.*
first off i made brownies. if you haven’t made homemade brownies, you should. they’re easy, and you’ll never go back. i had to use parchment paper since i wanted the whole shebang to come out of the pan. hate corners and parchment. i used this recipe from joy of cooking (JoC never disappoints). easy peasy.
i threw the brownies in the freezer for a quick cool down since my ice cream had been sitting out for about a half hour and i didn’t want it to become soup cream.
first things first: cut the brownie out for the bowl. some people use cake. some people use pound cake. from my meanderings on the web, i’ve heard that a dense cake is the best for the bottom.
i had measured the bowl and it was 8″ across. unfortunately (or fortunately as we’ll see), the parchment brought in the brownies so much that instead of 9×13, it was more like 7×12. see, i hate parchment.
time to goop the ice cream into the bowl. i’d read to use some plastic wrap for easy bowl removal as well as baking spray. i decided to give the spray a try. if anything. i’ll just run some hot water over the bowl if it doesn’t pop out.
strawberry then vanilla. as a non-strawberry ice cream liker, i want the vanilla next to the brownie! ok, for the fortunately part, turns out the bowl was a little bigger than the amount of ice cream i had, so i was able to tuck the brownie into the top of the bowl perfectly. my first plan was to just let it sit on top of the rim, but fortune was on my side.
wrapped that baby up with plastic wrap then tinfoil, and now it’s sitting in the freezer getting nice and frozen for the meringue that i’ll put on it on saturday. this was about 20X easier so far than i thought it would be.
*wiki! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baked_alaska