August 2010 Daring Baker's Challenge: Baked Alaska

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”.

This challenge has been quite tiring for me because I don't own an ice cream maker, which means that I had to take the ice cream out of the freezer every half an hour and stir it vigorously with a spatula. And it took me 3 hours to complete the vanilla ice cream!

I did the ice cream on monday and, on tuesday, I put it in the tea cups and baked the brown butter pound cake. Later on, before dinner, I assembled the pound cake + ice cream and left it in the freezer until wednesday, when I made the meringue and baked the completely assembled Baked Alaska. That makes 3 days to complete the challenge!

The easiest part was to make the meringue (of course! XD), but I had never made a meringue cover before and wasn't really fond of using the piping bag, so instead of that I chose to put the meringue on top of the ice cream and then try to make some spikes with the help of the spatula.

It's not that bad to be the first time, isn't it?

The recipes:

Ingredients for the vanilla ice cream:

250 ml whole milk
A pinch of salt
500 ml heavy cream
165g sugar
3 tsp vanilla extract
5 large egg yolks

Method for the vanilla ice cream:

1. Heat the milk, salt, and sugar in a medium saucepan until the liquid steams, then let cool to room temperature.
2. Set up an ice bath by placing a 2 litre bowl inside a large bowl partially filled with water and ice. Put a strainer on top of the smaller bowl and pour in the cream.
3. In another bowl, lightly beat the egg yolks together.
4. Reheat the milk in the medium saucepan until warmed, and then gradually pour 1/4 cup warmed milk into the yolks, constantly whisking to keep the eggs from scrambling.
5. Once the yolks are warmed, scrape the yolk and milk mixture back into the saucepan of warmed milk and cook over low heat. Stir constantly and scrape the bottom with a spatula until the mixture thickens into a custard which thinly coats the back of the spatula.
6. Strain the custard into the heavy cream and stir the mixture until cooled. Add the vanilla extract and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled, preferably overnight.
7. Put a deep baking dish, or bowl made of plastic, stainless steel or something durable in the freezer, and pour your custard mixture into it.
8. After 45 minutes, open the door and check it. As it starts to freeze near the edges, remove it from the freezer and stir it vigorously with a spatula or whisk to break up any frozen sections. Return to freezer.
9. Continue to check the mixture every 30 minutes, stirring vigorously as it's freezing. Keep checking periodically and stirring while it freezes until the ice cream is frozen. It will likely take 2-3 hours to be ready.

Ingredients for the Brown Butter Pound Cake (I made half of the recipe, thus I'm posting the ammounts I used):

125g unsalted butter
100g sifted cake flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
55g packed light brown sugar
35g granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Method for the Brown Butter Pound Cake:

1. Preheat the oven to 160°C and put a rack in the center. Butter and flour a 23cm x 23cm square pan.
2. Place the butter in a skillet over medium heat. Brown the butter until the milk solids are a dark chocolate brown and the butter smells nutty. Pour into a shallow bowl and chill in the freezer until just congealed, 15-30 minutes.
3. In another bowl, whisk together cake flour, baking powder, and salt.
4. Beat the brown butter, light brown sugar, and granulated sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well, and then the vanilla extract.
5. Stir in the flour mixture at low speed until just combined.
6. Scrape the batter into the greased and floured pan. Smooth the top with a rubber spatula and tap the pan on the counter. Bake until golden brown on top and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 15 minutes.
7. Cool in the pan 10 minutes. Run a knife along the edge and invert right-side-up onto a cooling rack to cool completely.

Ingredients for the Meringue:

2 large egg white
110g granulated sugar
1/4 tsp cream tartar
1/4 tsp salt

Method for the Meringue:

1. Beat the egg whites, cream of tartar, and salt on high speed in an electric mixer until soft peaks form.
2. Beat in the sugar gradually in a slow stream until stiff peaks form.

Assembling instructions:

1. Line 2 10cm diameter tea cups with plastic wrap, so that plastic wrap covers all the sides and hangs over the edge. Fill to the top with ice cream. Cover the top with the overhanging plastic wrap and freeze for several hours, or until solid. 

2. Line 2 10cm diameter tea cups with plastic wrap, so that plastic wrap covers all the sides and hangs over the edge. Fill to the top with ice cream. Cover the top with the overhanging plastic wrap and freeze for several hours, or until solid. 
3. Level the top of the brown butter pound cake with a serrated knife or with a cake leveler. Cut out 2 10cm diameter circles from the cake. Discard the scraps or use for another purpose.
4. Unwrap the ice cream "cups" and invert on top of a cake round. Trim any extra cake if necessary.

5. Smooth the meringue over the ice cream and cake with a spatula, so that none of the ice cream or cake is exposed. Freeze for one hour or up to a day.
6. Bake the meringue-topped Baked Alaskas on a rimmed baking sheet in a 260°C pre-heated oven for 5 minutes until lightly golden. Serve immediately.

The Baked Alaska is really a stressing cake when it comes the part of "baking" the ice cream, but its worth the worries because it tastes wonderful! ^^

Back from blogging holidays: chocolate crackle cookies

I know I didn't say that I was going on holidays, but it's because I didn't plan it.
Well, I did plan the holidays from work, but I didn't plan the blogging holidays. That's because I felt soooooo lazy that I didn't want to bake anything, therefore I had nothing to show. It felt good being on holidays and it feels horrible going back to work, but I suppose I'm left with no other alternative T_T

So, lets focus on the cookies: this isn't the first time that I bake this cookies, but it's the first time that I bake them not following the original recipe step by step.
A friend of mine gave me this recipe a year ago and I tried it inmediatly, but the cookies were too sweet for me and thus I decided that I was going to make them again but with some modifications. But I eventually forgot about doing that. Till now. Yesterday, while browsing through some old papers, I found the recipe and decided to try it again. Fortunately I wrote down last time the modifications that I wanted to do next time! Basicaly, I've cut down by half the amount of sugar and double the amount of vanila extract and baking powder (last time I thought the were a bit "hard" -_-U).
I prefer them now, they are not as dry as last time and you can taste better the chocolate flavour.

So, here's the recipe:

Ingredients:        

60g of butter
1 box of Nestle's chocolate fondue or 250g of cooking chocolate
50g of white granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 tsp of vanilla
210g of flour
1 tsp of baking powder
1 pinch of salt
(Optional)confectioners' sugar for dusting

Method:

1. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler or in the microwave.
2. Add the butter and let it cool sighly.
3. In a bowl, whisk together the granulated sugar and the eggs until it doubles it's size.
4. Add the chocolate and the vanila extract to the egg mixture and whisk until well combined.
5. Measure the flour into a small bowl, and stir in the baking powder and salt, blending well.
6. With a wooden spoon, stir the flour mixture into the egg mixture.
7. Wrap the bowl with plastic wrap and let it cool in the fridge for 1 hour.
8. Preheat the oven to 180ºC.
9. Take the bowl out of the fridge and, with your hands, take a small amount of dough, roll it into a ball shape and put it in a baking sheet. Here you can roll the balls in confectioners' sugar to give them a white coating. I ommited this step because I think that the cookies taste too sweet if I do it.
10. Bake in the pre-heated oven at 180ºC for about 10 minutes.
11. Transfer from oven to a wire rack and let them cool completely before storing in an airtight container.