Baked Alaska with a Lighter! How to Make Baked Alaska Ice Cream Cake
Category
🦄
CreativityTranscript
00:00 Hello this is Chef John from FoodWishes.com with Baked Alaska.
00:06 That's right, don't believe everything you hear in the lamestream media about this gorgeous
00:10 dessert being hard to make.
00:12 It's not.
00:13 It's super easy.
00:14 And is it so simple that a certain former governor of Alaska could make it?
00:18 Oh, you betcha.
00:19 So despite its fancy looks, this is really super basic and requires almost no cooking.
00:24 Okay, so let's get started and first up we have to mold some ice cream.
00:28 And I'm just going to use a couple soup cups, but this technique is literally going to work
00:31 with any shape or size container.
00:34 And one tip, put these in the freezer for about a half hour before you make this and
00:37 that will help prevent the ice cream from melting while we're working with it during
00:41 this step.
00:42 And then what we'll do is we'll line the mold with some plastic and begin scooping in some
00:46 ice cream.
00:47 So first up I'm going to put in a couple scoops of raspberry ice cream and we want to make
00:50 sure we're pressing down firmly and once whatever we're using for our first flavor of ice cream
00:54 is in, we'll take our scoop and make a nice well in the middle into which we will put
00:59 our second ice cream, in my case some French vanilla.
01:03 And obviously you can use any ice cream flavors you want here.
01:05 You could just do one flavor, you could do three flavors, but using more than one flavor
01:09 definitely makes for a more impressive presentation.
01:12 And then once that's been done, we can move on to the last component of the inside of
01:15 this at least, which would be the cake layer.
01:18 And for this I'm just using some high quality store-bought chocolate sponge cake.
01:22 And unless you have a lot of free time on your hands, don't make homemade cake for this.
01:25 You bake a homemade cake when you want to eat homemade cake, not when you want to eat
01:29 baked Alaska.
01:30 So I'm using store-bought and all we need to do is cut a thick slice and then we'll
01:33 cut or stamp out a round piece that will fit our cup.
01:37 And as you can see my cake wasn't quite wide enough, but that's really not going to matter
01:40 because we're going to cover everything with our Italian meringue.
01:43 And once we've cut our cake to fit, we'll press that down firmly on top of our ice cream.
01:47 And as you can see I'm pressing down and want to make sure everything's nice and compact
01:50 in there.
01:51 And we'll wrap those up.
01:52 And at this point we're going to transfer those into the freezer until they are frozen
01:56 solid.
01:57 Alright, at least a few hours.
01:58 Overnight's even better.
01:59 Alright, so really the only way to screw this up is to not freeze that stuff solid enough
02:02 before you do the meringue.
02:03 So you're going to have to decide how long to leave that in the freezer.
02:06 You're the Sarah Palin of not failing.
02:08 So make sure it's frozen solid.
02:10 But once it is, we can move on to the last step, which is our Italian meringue.
02:15 So in the bowl of my stand mixer I have two egg whites, to which we're going to add a
02:18 squeeze of lemon juice.
02:20 The acid in the juice is going to help stabilize these whites.
02:22 And what we'll do is we'll use the whisk attachment on our mixer and we will beat these egg whites
02:27 to the soft peak stage.
02:29 At which point we will introduce our sugar.
02:32 So I want you to stop right at this point.
02:34 Alright, we don't have stiff peaks.
02:36 We have very soft, very fuzzy, very floppy peaks.
02:39 And at this point if we were making just a regular meringue, we would just sprinkle in
02:42 the sugar and beat it some more.
02:44 But for an Italian meringue, we're actually going to add a very hot sugar syrup.
02:48 So into a little saucepan we're going to add some granulated sugar and a splash of water.
02:52 And we will bring that over to the stove and put it on medium high heat.
02:56 And of course that sugar is going to dissolve and it's going to start to simmer.
02:59 And what we need to do is cook this to exactly 240 degrees Fahrenheit.
03:04 Please do not accidentally cook this to 240 degrees Celsius.
03:08 That's going to be a little too far.
03:09 Alright, so make sure you have a candy thermometer or one of these probe thermometers.
03:12 And a lot of people like to leave the heat on medium high to high for this.
03:15 I don't.
03:16 When the meringue starts boiling, I like to back the heat down to medium or even medium
03:19 low so this goes kind of slow.
03:21 Because it can shoot right past that target temperature super quick.
03:24 Oh, and one other thing.
03:25 You see those grains of sugar stuck to the sides of the pot?
03:27 You're actually supposed to take a wet paintbrush and kind of brush those down back into the
03:31 mixture.
03:32 But I don't.
03:33 I can't be bothered.
03:34 And you know what?
03:35 It's never caused a problem.
03:36 But anyway, like I said, we're going to cook this to 240 degrees.
03:38 At which point we're going to remove it from the stove.
03:40 We'll turn our mixer back on.
03:42 And while it's whipping, we will carefully and slowly pour that sugar syrup in, in a
03:46 thin but steady stream.
03:48 So if you look straight across to the back of the bowl, you can see that being poured
03:51 in.
03:52 And I try to aim for right where the meringue meets the bowl.
03:54 Okay, right on that edge.
03:56 And because that stuff is so hot, it's going to actually cook those egg whites, which creates
04:00 a very stable, very easy to work with meringue.
04:03 And don't be alarmed, but you will actually notice steam coming out of the bowl.
04:06 Totally normal.
04:07 And if you feel the side with your hand, it's going to be very hot.
04:10 And all we need to do here is continue mixing on high speed until the mixture cools down
04:14 and we have some very, very stiff peaks.
04:17 And I mean stiff.
04:18 So I'm feeling the bowl here and it's gone from very hot to just barely warm.
04:22 So I'm going to turn that off and take a look.
04:24 And this is exactly what you want.
04:27 Very beautiful, very creamy, but very, very stiff peaks.
04:30 So that's perfect.
04:31 Look at that.
04:33 Now that's a stiff peak.
04:34 You could put an eye out with that.
04:36 And assuming our ice cream and cake molds are now completely frozen, we can move on
04:39 to final production.
04:41 So we'll unwrap our ice cream.
04:43 We will invert that on a plate and we will cover it in some decorative fashion with our
04:47 meringue.
04:48 And I decided to do two for you.
04:50 So this first one will be a little fancier.
04:51 So I'm going to pipe around the bottom and then we'll pipe straight up from the bottom
04:55 to the top.
04:56 And as you can see, because we're using that Italian meringue, this stuff is really going
04:59 to hold those sharp lines, which as you'll see is kind of a big deal when we brown this.
05:02 And once you've completed that, you could just leave the top rough like that.
05:05 But since this was the fancy one, I decided to take a little off the top, flatten it out
05:09 a little bit so I could pipe some really nice rosettes on the top.
05:12 All right, so that was fancy design number one.
05:15 And then for the second one, if you want, you can go a lot simpler and just cover it
05:18 all over with little rosettes, which while not as intricate, still looks amazing.
05:22 In fact, the takeaway here is not to worry too much about your design.
05:25 Once this is brown, no matter what you've done, it's going to look amazing.
05:28 OK.
05:29 And once we've covered that with whatever design we're doing, the last step is to brown
05:32 the outside.
05:34 And probably the easiest way is a blowtorch.
05:36 Although on the blog, I will give you instructions to use a hot oven instead.
05:40 And you want to use a light touch here.
05:41 All right, we really just want to brown the ridges so we have that beautiful contrast
05:45 between the dark brown and that bright white underneath.
05:49 So we will go around, we'll brown that meringue.
05:52 And once you're happy with how it looks, which for me was right here, your baked Alaska is
05:56 done and ready to eat.
05:57 I mean, come on, how gorgeous is that?
06:00 And we hardly did any work.
06:01 So let's go ahead and cut into this so we can see what we have.
06:03 And as beautiful as the outside was, the insides every bit as pretty.
06:06 And you can see here why you want to use more than one flavor of ice cream.
06:10 I think those multiple layers really add to this.
06:12 And then traditionally at this point, I would just start eating.
06:14 But I want to show you one amazing trick/discovery.
06:18 If you don't have a blowtorch and don't want to heat your oven up to 500 just to use it
06:22 for a couple minutes, you can actually use a windproof lighter to do this.
06:26 Oh yeah, there's no camera tricks here.
06:28 I browned this entire baked Alaska using a cheap windproof lighter.
06:32 In fact, if we're being honest, this actually did a better job and was easier to control
06:36 than the blowtorch.
06:38 So there you go, very cheap, very cool alternative.
06:40 So I browned up my fancy one.
06:42 And then speaking of fancy, if you want, you can always serve this flambé style.
06:46 This was just a little bit of brandy that I warmed up, ignited, and spooned over.
06:50 And had I thought to close the blinds, that would have looked incredible.
06:53 And besides the flames, that liquor is actually going to soak into the cake as it sits on
06:57 the plate.
06:58 So it's your classic win-win.
06:59 But anyway, let me cut into this one so I actually can take the official bite or two.
07:04 And it should come as a shock to no one, the cake, ice cream, and Italian meringue are
07:08 really good together.
07:10 And obviously any combination of cake or ice cream flavors will work.
07:13 Sky's the limit, up to you.
07:15 So you really can tailor this to your tastes.
07:17 So whether you're making this for some special occasion like Valentine's Day, or you just
07:21 want an easy make-ahead dessert for a weeknight dinner, I really do hope you give this baked
07:25 Alaska technique a try soon.
07:27 Okay?
07:28 Head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual.
07:32 And as always, enjoy!
07:35 [music]
07:37 [music]
07:38 [music]
07:39 [music]
07:40 [music]
07:41 [music]
07:41 [music]
07:42 [music]
07:42 [BLANK_AUDIO]