Sasha's Kitchen: Raspberry-Limoncello Baked Alaska

Baked Alaska is one of the few dessert recipes that has intimidated me for years.  It's really not that hard, the problem was that I tried to make a Baked Alaska before I knew how to make meringue.  I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that if you have never made meringue, don't start with this dessert, because failure with a Baked Alaska involves melted ice cream in the oven.  However, now that I am an experienced meringue maker in my KitchenAid Artisan Mixer  (necessary equipment for meringue making), I decided to give Baked Alaska another shot.  And while I wasn't able to see Russia from my house, the dessert was a huge success, and really quite simple to make, as long as the meringue is done correctly.

According to Wikipedia, the dessert, Baked Alaska was originally cooked at Delmonico's Restaurant (in New York, not Alaska) in 1876 to honor the recently acquired American territory.  There is another variation of the dessert that originated in Nome, Alaska which involves adding rum to the dessert, turning down the lights, and lighting the entire dessert on fire using the flambé technique.

I made traditional baked Alaskas in individual sized portions, using a raspberry-flavored pink meringue.  This dessert simply involves a piece of pound cake, a layer of ice cream and a layer of meringue on top.  As I learned the hard way in the past, it is extremely important to prepare the meringue correctly or the entire dessert will melt when you put it in the oven.  However, if the meringue is done correctly, it will create a seal on top of the dessert that will keep the ice cream cold during the four minutes in the oven while the meringue gets toasted, or baked.

Sasha's Raspberry Limoncello Baked Alaska (makes 4)
4 small pieces of homemade or store bought pound cake, sliced one inch thick
Limoncello-Coffee Gelato (click here for my recipe)
3 egg whites
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 cup sugar
1 dram of Lorann's Raspberry Flavoring
1 drop of Ateco gel-based pink food coloring  (the best food colorings out there, and the ones I use in all of my cupcake recipes)

First, wedge each slice of pound cake in a ramekin.  Then add a scoop of the limoncello-coffee ice cream and place the ramekins in the freezer while you make the meringue.  To make the meringue, separate three egg whites from the yolks.  Place the egg whites and the cream of tartar in the basin of your stand mixer and beat, using the whisk attachment until peaks begin to form.  Then add a drop of the food coloring and the vial of raspberry extract.  Continue to beat on high while slowly adding half a cup of sugar.  In the end, you will have to beat on high for about five minutes until you have a fluffy meringue.

A sample meringue

Add the meringue to a conventional pastry bag fitted with a tip.  It should be pink in color and smell like raspberry by this point, of course.  Pipe on top of the ice cream of each dessert using the pasty bag, the same way you would frost a cupcake.  Make sure to create a seal around the edges with the meringue and not to leave any of the ice cream exposed.  Then, place each of the four ramekins in the freezer for two hours (or up to a day).  When you are ready to eat, place in an oven preheated to 450 degrees.  Bake for three to four minutes only, until the meringue is nicely (but lightly) browned.  The combination of flavors here was perfect - the limoncello and coffee went so nicely with the raspberry flavored meringue, and I was so happy that the dessert didn't melt!  I'm including a photo of the inside of the dessert to show that the ice cream is still frozen inside.

Baked Alaska

Sasha's Kitchen: Raspberry-Limoncello Baked Alaska

Sasha's Kitchen: Rose's Heavenly Coconut Meringue Buttercream Cake (Cookbook Recipe Testing)

Yesterday, I decided to delve into my newest cookbook, Rose's Heavenly Cakes, from the famous cake-goddess, Rose Levy Beranbaum.  This cookbook has amazing and simply beautiful recipes for every kind of cake one could possibly imagine, and I am looking forward to testing some of those. This book, is just about the closest thing to a cake baker's bible, if there is such a thing - from, like I said above, the goddess of cakes herself.

I decided to start off grand, and prepare a two layer coconut meringue buttercream cake from her cookbook.  The recipe for the cake (which I won't re-post in its entirety here) can be found in her cookbook, Rose's Heavenly Cakes, which is hot off the press, having just been published in September, 2009.  She is also the author of The Cake Bible, the legendary 1988 cookbook that has certainly lived up to its name.

The recipe that I tried, is called the Southern (Manhattan) Coconut Cake With Silk Meringue Buttercream, found on pages 23-27 of her cookbook.  A few warnings before you proceed - this is not a cookbook for beginning bakers.  The recipes in the cookbook are wonderful (I've tried two so far, and certainly plan to try and test many more) but you should experiment with simpler recipes before delving into her multi-stage recipes.  In addition, I generally recommend that aspiring bakers begin with cupcakes before graduating to cakes because the scale is smaller and little mistakes can be a bit more forgiving.  Finally, although the recipes in this cookbook are amazing and extremely well put together and conceived, the instructions can be a bit complicated and intimidating for beginning bakers.  However, at this point, I am advanced enough to give a try, and the results did not disappoint, though perhaps I still have a few things to learn when it comes to cakes.  However, the result of this one was some true cake eye candy.

The first step in this recipe, was to create two layers of an light coconut cake.  The recipe, on page 23 of Rose's cookbook was fairly simple to execute.  It involved using a combination of coconut milk (the real deal - lots of calories - not lowfat coconut milk) and coconut extract to achieve a coconut flavor.  The cake used cake flour, as well as superfine sugar, a lighter sugar, that melts faster and allows the cake to have a lighter, more airy texture.

My mistake, and one I will not make again, was to use two (older) metal cake pans, by different manufacturers - which resulted in the layers of the cake being a bit uneven.  Both were fine on their own, but I had some difficulty stacking them into a two layer cake.  Thus, I instead made two delicious single cakes (because I really need to eat two entire cakes, and have a 4000-calorie a day diet - once again, I may have prepared too much food, and need to share!)  Next time, I will use two uniform silicon cake molds, which I think will get the job done and allow me to make a layer cake.

It's a bit tricky also to determine when the cakes are done baking.  You want to make sure they don't become crispy around the edges, but are cooked through.  It's an art and requires testing the inside of one of the cakes with a candy thermometer and with a toothpick.

Rose's recipe for the frosting for the cake(s) - depending on whether you are doing a two layer monster, or two separate cakes, is for a silk meringue buttercream.  Preparing this frosting is an art in and of itself, that requires multiple stages that are not for the novice baker.  As the name implies, the frosting requires preparing an Italian Meringue, and also a Creme Anglaise.  It also requires an eye-popping amount of butter.  (Really, as a baker, it is incredible to see the amount of butter and sugar that go into so many delicious baked goods - mind boggling, so consume in small portions).

First, I prepared the creme anglaise, which is a type of custard.  This was relatively easy and involved mixing and heating sugar, egg yolks, coconut milk, vanilla extract and coconut extract until you have a coconut flavored custard.  Then, this was set aside while I prepared the meringue.

Meringue has been the one aspect of baking that has always intimidated me.  Until yesterday, quite honestly, my meringues were always failures and I always avoided meringue recipes like the plague.  But finally Rose presented a sure-fire formula that I was able to figure out and prepare a winning meringue.  So, I suppose those meringue desserts need no longer scare me off.  In fact, I enjoyed preparing the meringue and it was almost as easy as preparing whipped egg whites for a souffle, just with a sugary-twist.

To prepare the meringue, which I will discuss in detail, I used the following ingredients:

2 large egg whites (separated from the yolks) at room temperature

1/3 cup plus 2 T superfine sugar

2 T of water

1/4 tsp cream of tarter

I beat the egg whites, as instructed by Rose's recipe, in my artisan mixer (fitted with the whisk attachment) until foamy.  I heated the 1/3 a cup of sugar and water in a saucepan to form what was like a simple syrup.  Next, I added the cream of tarter to the egg whites and beat until soft peaks formed, and then gradually beat in the other 2 T of sugar until it formed stuff peaks.  Then, I heated the sugar-water to about 248 F using a candy thermometer and then beat the egg whites gradually adding the sugar water.  Low and behold a meringue formed!! The consistency was perfect and the meringue tasted - well meringue-like.  So, I am eternally grateful to Rose for those perfect directions that helped me figure this one out.  Meringue, you no longer scare me!

The final step here was to combine the butter (her recipe called for four sticks of butter (yes, four, you are reading that correctly) with the other frosting components.  I don't care for such a buttery frosting, so I used 2 and a half and it was just fine and still plenty light and airy for me.  I beat in the Italian meringue, coconut shavings and creme anglaise into the delicious frosting.  

Sasha's Kitchen: Rose's Heavenly Coconut Meringue Buttercream Cake (Cookbook Recipe Testing)

Sasha's Kitchen: Flourless Chocolate Cake (and how not to make a sticky mess)

I was not attempting to make a flourless chocolate cake. However, I made a very good one, even though I was able to eat only a very small amount of it. This is my first post since starting this website that I made something that, quite frankly, did not work out.

What I learned tonight is that there is a very short list of things I should never again try to make (unless I can get a tutorial from someone who knows how to make it) and should let other people make for me. This list only includes two foods (everything else I either can make if I try to, or have no interest in making, or haven't yet tried), which are:  1) saltwater taffy; and 2) baked alaska / meringue. Also, tonight's lesson is sometimes you don't have to make the most complicated thing in the world - i.e. a baked alaska. A chocolate cake or something less exotic is usually just fine as long as it looks and tastes good. (Having said that, I will be making creme brulee tomorrow).

In all fairness, I am sure with a little practice, I could figure out gnocchi. It just didn't work out the one time I tried. But the other two were colossal disasters. Candy making is very precise (more so than even baking) and you must use a candy thermometer to get the temperature exactly right. I tried making saltwater taffy using a recipe from a science museum (I think in Chicago). I used the candy thermometer I had - a thermometer a friend of my mom's gave me years ago in case I ever wanted to make candy. Little did she know 20 years later I would actually try . . . I think part of the reason it didn't work was because the candy thermometer may no longer be calibrated correctly after all these years, something that never occurred to me until after the fact. The first time I made a hard candy (not terrible, just not saltwater taffy); the second time I made a gelatinous gooey mess. I bet I could get it right with a new thermometer, but honestly, I don't need to waste anymore time making taffy than I already have when I can make rainbow cookies and fondant cakes and pasta dishes instead. I will eventually invest in a new candy thermometer though.

If you are reading this post to find out how to make a good flourless chocolate cake, here's the recipe:

5 T sugar
3 oz bittersweet chocolate, melted (you can buy baking squares)
3 egg yolks
3 egg whites (separate the eggs)
1 tsp vanilla

First, beat the sugar and egg yolks in your artisan mixer (if I haven't yet convinced you that this machine is the coolest thing since the invention of the wheel, I don't know what else I can say to encourage you to buy one). You should beat at medium speed until pale and yellow, for about 10 minutes. Then add the melted chocolate and vanilla and mix to combine.

Next take the chocolate mixture out of the artisan mixer and put in a bowl. If you have a handheld mixer, like I do, you can leave it in the artisan mixer and do the next step using your handheld.

Either using a handheld mixer or artisan mixer, beat the 3 egg whites until stiff and fluffy, with a inch of salt and 2 T of sugar, and then fold this mixture gently into the chocolate mixture, using a spatula.  Be gentle.

Spray a pan with pam and put into a circular 8 inch cake pan. Bake in your preheated oven for 20 minutes at 350. The end result should be a light and fluffy but decadadently chocolate cake.

If you are smart, you will stop here and enjoy eating the cake. If you're like me, you might experiment further. I decided to top with ice cream, make meringue on top and put in the oven, to make a Baked Alaska. It did not work, and in fact resulted in a sticky mess. Basically my delicious cake was covered with a pint of melted ice cream and gooey marshmallow fluff. Note: the oven is still clean but when we tried to cut the baked alaska it was melted and gooey. The cake underneath was still great though.

I am great at making stiff peaks with eggs - I can make awesome souffles for this reason, and pretty much anything else requiring puffy egg whites. But I cannot make meringue, no matter what I do. I guess even in doing our passions we have our shortcomings. I made a gooey marshmallow mess that was about 50% meringue like. If you ever bought a jar of marshmallow fluff (I used to live next door to Peanut Butter & Company on Sullivan Street, which by the way, has the best cinnamon raison peanut butter ever), you know what I actually made. It did not create a proper seal for the ice cream, and let's leave it at that. My husband was less than thrilled about the cleanup but at least it didn't get all over the oven.

My mom told me later that she once made meringue and her Baked Alaska and it worked out fine. She said we should make it together. So perhaps Baked Alaska will have it's chance to succeed with me cooking with my mom - in her kitchen, using her oven!!

If you have tips on how I can make a better meringue and Baked Alaska please comment here and let me know. I feel like I should at least figure out the meringue part someday without wasting anymore eggs and sugar since I hate knowing that there's something I can't cook/bake. Hope you enjoy the flourless chocolate cake in the meantime. My husband has requested that I make it again soon so he can actually eat it!

Sasha's Kitchen: Flourless Chocolate Cake (and how not to make a sticky mess)