I’ve been wanting to try Baked Alaska for ages, plus who doesn’t want to use a cooking torch?? I opted to use a Test Kitchen recipe since I feel like a lot of people said this was fairly difficult and they’re good at testing different kinds of ingredients/methods to find the perfect recipe.

The cake recipe utilizes whipped eggs whites and while you’d think I’d be good at this by now I still struggle here because I’m too worried about over mixing but then I’m also trying not to end up with streaks of egg whites. If you’ve got tips for this process please share via email or social media! Thankfully it looked fairly good once it had baked so I do think I’m getting a little better. While the cakes were cooling I pulled the ice cream out and shaped it as directed.

I wanted a second set of eyes to ensure I wasn’t cutting the cooled cake incorrectly so my husband helped out here. Once I had everything cut I set those aside and started putting everything together. My cake was a little sticky so it was a little messy but we finally got everything wrapped and popped it back in the freezer.

Since this needs to freeze for at least several hours I did all of this the night before and then finished the final assembly stages a few hours before serving. I was worried about cutting the cylindrical cake since while assembling it seemed like it might not stick together but after freezing overnight it was fine. I popped it on the base layer and then put it back in the freezer until right before serving.

The meringue isn’t difficult to make but be sure to cook the mixture at a low temperature so the sugar melts completely and it isn’t grainy. Then just be sure to slowly mixture this and the egg whites together. This makes quite a bit of meringue so I went to town frosting the cake with this. Rather than using the broiler I torched the meringue since that’s more fun!

All of the components tasted really good together; though I felt like the meringue was a little overpowering since there’s so much of it. The only downside to this cake is it’s really best when eaten same day so be sure to have enough people around to eat this so there’s nothing leftover. All in all, I’m very glad I finally tried this as it was very good and a perfect summertime dessert!

Baking Ease	8
Time Spent	7
Taste	10
Visual	10

Recipe Used: America’s Test Kitchen: The Perfect Cake p. 216