The Fabulous Baked Alaska with Grand Marnier

2015-12-17

This Recipe
Cuisine: French Cuisine
Course: Frozen Dessert, Dessert
Difficulty: Experienced
Category: Course
Servings: 10
Preparation Time: 1 H
Cooking Time: 20 Minutes

This Post
Chef : François
Category: Recipe
Posted on: Thursday December 17, 2015
Comments : No Comment
Languages : English | Français

Ingredients
Egg Whites, Ice cream, Grand marnier ice cream, Grand marnier, Italian meringue, Oranges, Genoa bread, Almond paste,

La version Française se trouve ICI

The ultimate cake for Ice Cream lovers, with Grand Marnier and Almond flavors.... a real treat

About this recipe

This one is a recipe everybody asks me every year for end of the year celebrations, and though it's easy to make, it's a huge sucess everytime... a recipe really interesting from a return on investment perspective !

Origin of the recipe

A delicious Ice Cream with Grand Marnier, covered in Italian Meringue.

The American physicist Benjamin Thompson Rumford discovered the insulating power of egg whites, and called it initially «Omelette Surprise» in 1804.
Jean Giroix, the French chef at «Hotel de Paris» in Monte-Carlo contributed to make this dessert famous and renamed it «Omelette Norvégienne» in French, better known as «Baked Alaska» in English
Another theory is that the dessert was brought to France by the master cook of a Chinese mission and disclosed his technique to the French chef Balzac of the Grand Hotel

All recipes of Frozen Desserts

The Fabulous Baked Alaska with Grand Marnier
(THIS RECIPE)

All the Recipes of Frozen Desserts are HERE

Grand marnier Ice Cream

We need a good Ice Cream with Grand Marnier flavor

Of course, the best option is to make it yourself ! the recipe is HERE

Ice cream from the store

The fastest option is to buy it of course !. Ice Cream with Grand Marnier are not easy to find though... You may choose another flavor, if you can't find "Grand Marnier Ice Creams", like Orange flavor.

If you purchase the Ice Cream, you will need to thaw it

a few hours

in the fridge to make it smooth

The Almond Cake, the «Genoa Bread»

To make this cake at home, the recipe is HERE

The mold

Let's talk about the mold. I am using a perfect mold, as it's made out of Silicon, which allows you to pop out the frozen ice cream easily. Its triangle shape is perfect as well for this recipe.

The brand of this silicon mold is Silikomart, and is called «Gianduia» mold.
You can find it easily online, like on Amazon.com. Dimensions: 9.84" (or 9 27/32" or 25 cm) x 3.14" (or 3 5/32" or 8 cm), height: 3.54" (or 3 35/64" or 9 cm)

When you don't have this mold, you can substitute it with a bread loaf mold. After the ice cream has set, you can "carve" it out very easily with a knife

Assembling the dessert

Let's pour in the Grand Marnier Ice Cream into the mold.

The ice cream must be soft enough, otherwise thaw it in the fridge for

a few hours

We now lay the cake that we just cut

Make sure to push the cake into the mold.

Place the mold in the freezer and wait at least

8 hours

The Orange Italian Meringue

We need an Italian meringue which is more stable than French Meringue.
We also need it as Italian meringue holds up to the heat of a torch or broiler

Italian Meringue

1 ½ Cup Sugar (350 grams)

½ Cup Water (110 grams)

¾ Cup Egg Whites (200 grams)

1 Orange Zest

For the syrup, let's start by cooking the

Water

(½ Cup or 110 g) and the

Sugar

(1 ½ Cup or 350 g) on high heat in a saucepan.

You want to use a thermometer to check the temperature, which is essential to succeed your italian meringue

As soon as the temperature reaches 200 °F / 90 °C, start beating the

Egg Whites

(¾ Cup or 200 g), on medium heat.

Ideally, your egg whites are at room temperature by the time you start beating them.

Whisk in the

Orange Zest

When the syrup reaches 245 °F / 118 °C, stream the hot syrup into your egg whites while they continue to whip on low speed...

Make sure the stream does not touch the whisk

After you finished drizzling in the syrup, continue whipping on high speed for about

5 minutes

Using a Pastry Bag

Fill a Pastry Bag fitted with the large star tip, with the meringue

We need a Pastry Bag and a decorating tip. We will need to use a decorating tip called a "star tip" like this one. The tip must be pretty large to make nice and big lines.
For more information about Pastry Bag and how to use it, visit this page.

Matfer Bourgeat Pastry Bags

French Star Pastry Tips Set, Stainless Steel

Push and squeeze the Pastry Bag inside the tip firmly to avoid the batter to go out the Pastry Bag while you are transferring your batter

We are now ready to unmold the ice cream

Last steps...

Pipe the meringue onto the ice cream in a decorative fashion, making big vertical lines, from the bottom to the top

Let's now finish piping some meringue on the top...

Finish by piping the top of the ice cream, in the end, the result must look like an Alaska mountain (please make sure there's no Sarah Palin sitting on it)

Blowtorch

Let's brown the meringue with a blowtorch.

As an alternative, you may place in oven, and bake until the meringue starts to brown, 1 to 2 minutes, and not more !

And voila !