Daring Bakers' Challenge - August 2010: Ice Cream Petit Fours / Baked Alaska with Brown Butter Pound Cake

It's that time of the month again... DB challenge is to be revealed! I can't believe how time just swished by so quick. Before you know it, it's December again (well, let's not exaggerate). This month's challenge gave us a choice either to make petit fours, Baked Alaska or both. I decided to go for the Baked Alaska just so I can play with some flames! Before I continue my blog, I shall post the mandatory blog checking lines for this challenge.

Blog-checking lines: The August 2010 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Elisa of 17 and Baking. For the first time, The Daring Bakers partnered with Sugar High Fridays for a co-event and Elisa 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".

There's basically three main components to a Baked Alaska; ice cream atop a cake then altogether fully encased with snowy meringue. The meringue is then torched or baked until brown in color; it is sometimes served flambéed. For this challenge, the cake part of our Baked Alaska has to be the beurre noisette (brown butter) pound cake. I have no complaints in using this pound cake recipe; it was a really delectable butter cake with a subtle nutty taste from the brown butter. The taste of the cake actually reminded me of the infamous blue tinned Royal Dansk Danish butter cookies that I used to gorge indulge when I was young; it certainly brought back childhood memories! 

  

I chose hazelnut praline cream cheese as the flavour of my ice cream for simple reasons. Firstly, hazelnut praline to compliment the nutty pound cake. Then secondly, cream cheese because I have bountiful supply of it! I don't know if you have noticed, but most of my blog post for this month had some cream cheese factor. It wasn't planned or anything; I just saw a good 2-for-1 bargain on the grocery. I know two packs of cream cheese is not much, but mind you most of the time I just bake for two, so two packs of cream cheese does go a long way in my household! Lastly, the sound of hazelnut praline cream cheese does make me salivate!

I've prepared the meringue, all my components were set; the time had come to play with my torch (bought specially for this challenge)! I really really had a blast, and it definitely brought out the kid in me. All these flames gave me a fiery urge to go all daring with the glow of heat. The rum was out, and I had a tea cup filled with dazzling blaze of flambéed rum ready to be poured onto the toasted snow. I might have gone overboard though as the scarf I used for the backdrop of my picture caught some flame, so now it has an incy wincy hole. I must admit it was my favourite scarf, so I was really disappointed. I had no choice, but to look at the brighter side of things - my scarf has more meaning to it now than it had! Good self comfort?

Anyway, this was a really fun and exciting challenge. To be honest, when I first saw the challenge, I wasn't all enthused. I was like, "ice cream and cake... didn't we just do that last month?" Nevertheless, I decided to join in the fun, which I'm glad I did. The waves of fire made this challenge interesting! Looking forward to what next month's DB host has up his/her sleeves; hope it's something new!

I sprinkled some hazelnut praline powder on the crater of my Baked Alaska.

Bisou bisou,

Charlotte