Home › Pudding Sauces › Baked Alaska
Baked Alaska
Whites 6 eggs 6 tablespoons powdered sugar 2 quart brick of ice cream Thin sheet sponge cake Make meringue of eggs and sugar as in Meringue I, cover a board with white paper, lay on sponge cake, turn ice cream on cake (which should extend one-half inch beyond cream), cover with meringue, and spread smoothly. Place on oven grate and brown quickly in hot oven. The board, paper, cake, and meringue are poor conductors of heat, and prevent the cream from melting. Slip from paper on ice cream platter.
A workable set of instructions, provided the assembly is airtight and the oven is genuinely hot. The whole trick is insulation: cake and meringue keep heat off the ice cream long enough to colour the outside.
- The hinge: seal every edgeThe meringue must meet the cake all the way round with no gap, and no thin patches over the corners. Any break lets heat reach the ice cream directly and the whole thing slumps.
- Oven heat"hot oven" in books of this period is usually taken as somewhere in the region of 450F. Browning should take only a few minutes; a moderate oven risks melting the cream before the meringue colours.
- Meringue IThe quantities given here, six whites to six tablespoons of powdered sugar, work out at about a tablespoon of sugar per white, beaten or folded in gradually. Beat to firm, glossy peaks so the coating holds its shape under the oven.
- A brick of ice creamIce cream was commonly moulded and sold in rectangular bricks, which is why the recipe assumes a neat block. The recipe calls for two quarts: press it into a loaf pan, freeze hard, then turn out.
- Freeze before bakingThe original assumes ice cream straight from the ice-cream freezer or icebox. Assemble the cake, ice cream and meringue, then return the whole thing to the freezer for at least an hour so it goes into the oven rock solid.
- Board and paperA wooden cutting board with parchment (in place of the white paper) does the same job. Avoid a metal sheet pan, which conducts heat straight into the base.
- Egg whitesThe interior of the meringue never gets hot in three minutes at 500F. If that matters for who is eating it, use pasteurised whites, or brown the surface with a kitchen torch instead.
- YieldA two-quart brick serves eight to ten. Cut with a large knife dipped in hot water and wiped between slices.