I love getting to spend time at the weekend in my kitchen cooking for the whole family, usually something special that takes a little more time, and as there’s always lots of extra people to help us eat the mountains of food. As we were catering today for a group in Alan’s garden, Saturday was chosen for the dinner of substance.
I was going to decorate the dessert with rose petals, but it looked so beautiful on the bush, I couldn’t bear to pick it.
Baked Alaska is truly retro, and not simple in its execution. Needing a few basic ingredients, it comes together in it’s majesty at the last minute.
A simple sponge is used as the base, I usually make two, one for this, and one to freeze for an emergency. Homemade strawberry ice cream is a complete must.
This gets frozen while I make meringue, which is then spread carefully over the entire dish, completely covering the ice cream, this is very important, so that it stays intact in the oven.
This then gets put back in the freezer until you are 10 minutes away from serving, the entire dessert goes into a very hot oven for ten minutes until turning golden.
It was polished off rapidly, sure there was no point in keeping any leftovers, they wouldn’t have been nice!