Apricot Ice Cream Baked Alaska

The picture is one I'd rather forget. I'm standing apart from my friends Leah and Julie, wearing a gypsy-looking skirt and a scowl. I'm about 10 and from the looks of it, fresh into a tantrum. It's a pre-birthday dinner photo-op, and even though I can't remember what I was so pissed about, the memory of dessert sticks in my head like popcorn in my maw. Bananas Foster, my favorite flame-o dessert, likely landed in front of me that night.

Mom liked to make flambeed desserts, which only fed my healthy love of the blue flame. Cherries jubilee? Check. Marshmallows dripping sugary flames into a fire? Yup. Hell, I preferred using a combination of hairspray and a lighter to kill roaches. So much more fun than a newspaper. What can I say? I like fire. Always have.  

So cheers to Elissa at 17 and Baking for enabling me to whip out the blowtorch on this month's baking challenge! Granted, baked Alaska is a little bit restrained for my pyro tendencies, but that's what makes it a challenge, you know?

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”.

The only variation I made from the original challenge was in the flavor of the ice cream. It's summer in Seattle, and that means fresh fruit everywhere. I paired a fantastic browned butter poundcake base with a bright apricot ice cream. When topped with meringue, the combination evoked a creamsicle, albeit one singed at the edges.

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