Baked Alaska

For this month's Daring Bakers' challenge, hostess Elissa asked us to use beurre noisette (more commonly known as browned butter) to make a cake. But there is nothing common about browned butter. It's butter that has been heated until its milk solids turn brown. The browned milk solids impart that toasty, nutty flavor and scent that is characteristic of beurre noisette.

Elissa wanted us to use the browned butter cake in one or two ways: baked Alaska and ice cream petit fours. Baked Alaska is basically a disc of cake topped with ice cream, covered in meringue which is then lightly toasted with a flame. The ice cream petit fours are tiny ice cream sandwiches covered in ganache. We could use any flavor of ice cream as long as it's homemade from scratch and the cake part of the dessert must be the browned butter cake. I decided to just make the baked Alaska.

Even before I made the browned butter cake I knew that it would be super-duper rich since there are almost 1o ounces of butter in this one 9x9-inch cake. That's a whole lot of rich. To combat the richness I decided to combine it with tart ice cream. The super lemon ice cream from David Lebovitz's "The Perfect Scoop" sounded just perfect. It was super lemony as the name promised, but since it was an eggless recipe, it wasn't as creamy as the custard based ice creams I am used to. But of course the dessert would not remain eggless for long. The sweet and fluffy meringue would soon join the party.

I've always associated browned butter with the colder months. Summer is not the season for browned butter. Or so I thought. The cake was practically (well, figuratively) dripping with butterfat. But it's so delicious that I didn't care about the season or the calories.



The only issue with the cake being all about the butter is that it wasn't the right cake to use in a frozen dessert. Cold butter is solid so a cake chocked full of butter would be quite solid when chilled. And normally that wouldn't be a problem. Just take the cake out of the cold and let it come to room temperature before serving. But this was not an option with the baked Alaska since it was topped with ice cream. The ice cream would've been a puddle if I waited for the cake base to come to temperature. So we thought the frozen cake actually tasted like a stick of butter.

My husband said the only way to enjoy the baked Alaska was to eat it in parts. So we first ate the lemon ice cream and the meringue off the cake base. Then we popped the cake base into the microwave for a few seconds to warm it up. Whatever lemon ice cream was still clinging to the cake had melted and soaked into the now warm disc of cake. It was freakin' delicious! So even though we had to deconstruct the baked Alaska to work around the texture issue, it worked out nicely in the end.



Blog-checking lines: 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”.

NectarineTurnovers and a Kitchen Makeover

The Bay Area is having its coolest summer in decades. Today's high temperature in San Francisco was 60F. If you are experiencing sweltering summer weather (like in the Midwestern or Southeastern US), baking might be the last thing on your mind. But for me, turning on the oven was a welcoming blast of warmth.

I went a little overboard buying nectarines at the farmers' market. (Blossom Bluff Orchards - I adore you!). I could've made a pie with my lovely yellow nectarines, but it was much quicker to make turnovers which are essentially hand pies.

I already had some homemade puff pastry thawed and ready to use, but any good high quality store bought all-butter puff pastry dough like Dufour brand will make the task even easier.

These turnovers can be made with any summer stone fruit: nectarines, peaches, cherries, plums would all work well.

So if it's not too hot to turn on the oven, I highly recommend making these. Don't you think these little pocket pies would be a perfect surprise in a back to school lunch box?



I thought I would mention how much I regret missing last month's Daring Bakers' challenge which combined a jelly roll cake with homemade ice cream. I have a perfectly good reason other than laziness for missing it. The husband and I decided to do some tiling and painting in the kitchen. You can see the kitchen pictures and the turnover recipe after the jump.