A bit more about my birthday baked Alaska. 1 September 2009 8:52 am
Posted by Tracy in : baking,books,cooking,dessert,events,friends,hot mess,pictures,seasonality , 4 commentsI kept adding details to the “spectacular birthday dessert” portion of yesterday’s post until I realized there was no way I could cut my remarks down to a paragraph. So the saga continues today.
Peter really wanted me to have a birthday cake this weekend, and I wasn’t very helpful about expressing an opinion on the matter. I’m not the biggest cake fan in general, and well, my birthday’s at the end of August. Growing up in New Jersey, where the end of the summer is a time of high humidity and low appetite, cake wasn’t really appropriate. I had a lot of ice cream cakes — and before you start imagining Carvel mediocrity, I’ll have you know that we got our cakes from a place in town that made their own ice cream from scratch, and it was delicious. One year my birthday cake was half a watermelon with candles in it. Summer in New Jersey, man. It’s not for wimps. Anyway.
This weekend’s weather was actually pretty cool, and Peter was not having any of this ice cream cake business, so we rummaged around in Baking Illustrated until we came up with an awesome compromise: baked Alaska. It’s got cake, it’s got ice cream, it’s got some major adventure cooking… what’s not to love? Check it out:
I only got one cross-section picture because the rapidly-melting middle meant there was even more time pressure to serve and eat the deliciousness.
