Individual Baked Alaska
3 egg whites from large eggs at room temperature
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
1/4 cup sugar
1/8 tsp salt
1/4 tsp vanilla
2 individual sponge cakes or pound cake
1/2 pint ice cream
- Whip eggs until frothy
- Whip in cream of tartar, then beat at high speed until soft peaks form
- Continue beating whie gradually adding sugar, 1 tsp at a time until all sugar has been added
- Beat in vanilla. Meringue should now form stiff peaks
- Place 1 scoop of ice cream on each individual slice of pound cake/sponge cake
- Place on a small bread board or steak board (they must be baked on a wooden board)
- Cover mounds with meringue, covering ice cream thickly and completely. Seal & insulate ice cream from heat.
- Store in freezer until ready to bake: just before serving
- Bake in preheated 475 degree oven until meringue is golden--about 3 minutes. Serve at once.
Serves 2.
Becky's notes
To do a larger baked alaska, I just increase the meringue recipe and I either slice a frozen pound cake in half the long way and use that for the base, or I have used Anita's lemon pound cake recipe for the cake with lemon sorbet then a layer of vanilla ice cream outside that (so it would be pound cake, sorbet, ice cream, meringue). You can use any flavor ice cream you like for variety.
To do the sorbet & ice cream combo I line a metal bowl with saran wrap, cover sides with the ice cream leaving a hole for the sorbet and then fill with sorbet. Make a flat top and freeze. Then pull on the saran wrap to get the ice cream/sorbet dome out and invert onto pound cake and proceed with meringue as above.