Daring Bakers: Baked Alaska

Our first home

Today is Malaysia's National Day. The country is 53 this year. I've had nothing to do with any of the events that are taking place, so I cannot use that as an excuse for posting late on this month's Daring Bakers challenge. I've simply been trying to play catch-up with things in life, though by the looks of the picture, it might seem as if I just have too much time on my hands! 

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.

You will find the recipe in pdf form here. And please visit the Daring Bakers website for all the creative work done by the other Daring Bakers who took part.

I decided to make the Baked Alaska. Why? Because as soon as I read "Baked Alaska", I thought of this pair of papier mâche penguins I had made to illustrate crafts on wedding gifts some time ago, so snow, ice... IGLOOS! The penguins would fit perfectly into the tableau.

You can tell I like to play with my food.

Crack, whip, ice, and finally the burnt butter

The vanilla ice cream is from the last Daring Bakers challenge. A month has passed and there's still so much left over so I was quite glad this month's challenge involved ice cream again.

I used the oven to brown the meringue but as you can see, it didn't toast all over. The igloo sat on a cake board but it was a little fiddly doing the browning in the oven since I couldn't manoeuvre the base very well.