- On fire!
(sighs)
Nope.
- Take seven.
- It's brownies, it's ice crema, it's meringue.
It's a baked Alaska on fiya!
(screams)
(laughs)
That was a little warm, okay.
So we're making a baked Alaska today,
and we're doing it a little bit different
because it's the Cookie show,
so usually baked Alaska has some sort of spice cake
or a sponge cake, but we're gonna do ours with a brownie.
So, first things first, let's make a brownie.
Join me at the stove.
So we've got some simmering water going already.
I'm just gonna pop that little copper,
little copper bowl on top there.
Copper bowl, meet butter.
Yes, butter!
Let's do another whole stack.
Thanks, Land O'Lakes.
Now you need some semi-sweet chocolate chips,
and to deepen the flavor we got
a little unsweetened chocolate that's been chopped.
So we're gonna let this all melt.
I'm gonna grab a spatula that's across the kitchen.
Yoink.
Oh, I'm gonna hold onto this
with this 'cause it's hot, all right.
Too hot for the hot tub, hot!
While you're doing a double boiler,
you wanna keep your water just at a simmer.
You don't really need it to totally boil
'cause all you're using is the steam.
So as long as your water is still steaming, you're good.
It doesn't need to be at a full boil or anything.
So we're just gonna keep that on low, let it melt.
Let's do our dry ingredients, get back to the baking, huh?
AP flour, little bit of salt, you gotta have some salt.
And baking powder.
(humming)
Whisk it up.
♪ You know you wanna play up some ♪
Okay.
We got these wet ingredients,
we have one more round that we need to do.
So we've got some sugar, eggs.
'Nilla.
And our special ingredient, instant coffee.
I feel like sometimes people are like,
Elise, I don't like coffee.
Don't put the coffee in there, please.
Here's the thing, I really don't think
you can taste the coffee in this.
I think all it does is amp up the flavor of the chocolate.
We're gonna add the coffee
and if you're like I really hate it, don't put it in there.
It's not gonna affect anything in the recipe,
but I think you're really missing out.
As your friend, I just want you to know.
I think you should try it.
So we got eggs and sugar,
we're gonna go ahead and start giving those a little whisk.
We do have some baking powder in this recipe,
but you're also gonna get a little bit of air
by whisking the sugar and the eggs.
So, get in there, don't be afraid.
You can get a little air in there.
All right.
Vanilla.
Special ingredient, coffee!
Which I probably need some more of this morning.
So we've got our three elements.
We have our dry ingredients and then we have basically
two kinds of wet ingredients.
We have our chocolate mixture and then we have our eggs.
That's a lovely color.
It's not, but it's fine.
We do have to kind of stir this on a frequent basis
'cause you don't want it to burn.
Okay.
I think we're ready.
Let's combine it!
Comes together pretty quickly.
So, this is our egg and coffee situation.
Chocolate, chocolate!
(laughs)
So let's just stir together our chocolate
and our eggs and our coffee.
Final step, add the flour.
I know this seems like, Elise, that's not enough flour
and you're not wrong to think that but you are
'cause you actually don't need that much.
The flour's literally just there
to kind of help bind the chocolate
and the eggs together and the sugar.
It's almost like fudge.
All right.
Sprayed, parchment, nine-inch cake pan.
We're just gonna pour our batter in here.
(optimistic music)
Brownies!
Great, this is gonna remain intact
to be the base of our basked Alaska.
So the next part of this we're gonna make
our ice cream dome, that's gonna sit over the top of this
and then we're gonna cut into it slices
like you would with a cake or something like that,
but this is the crucial bottom layer.
This is what offers us some stability.
So, in the oven for about a half hour.
Look at this, look at that.
One-handed.
Great.
Nailed it.
Step two for our baked Alaska.
Time to make an ice cream dome.
Okay, this is where everyone that's like,
"Elise, I like watching your show,
"but I don't wanna bake."
We're about to do something that is not baking,
and doesn't involve making anything homemade at all
because we're using store-bought ice cream,
and we're just gonna smush it into this bowl
until it forms a dome, super simps.
All right, I am going with pistachio ice cream
and straw berry ice cream
and we are gonna layer these in this bowl.
Now, size of bowl, very important.
This is a nine-inch.
The circumference, oh my god,
I remembered something from geometry.
Okay, the circumference of this bowl is nine inches
and we're baking our brownie in a nine-inch cake pan
and that's because when this is frozen,
it's gonna flip upside down and sit on top of our brownie.
So, I'm gonna start with one pint
of Haagen-Dazs Pistachio Ice Cream.
What's up, Haagen-Dazs?
All right, so we're just gonna scoop this out.
I would recommend that you let your ice cream sit
in the refrigerator for maybe a half hour
before you get started because otherwise you're gonna
have super frozen ice cream and you won't be able
to actually mold it into anything.
You're gonna end up with a bent spoon
and if it's yo mama's spoon,
she gone be mad at you and I can't help you
if you've made that choice yourself, you know?
So, we're just looking to try to make an even layer
in the bottom of this,
and we've lined this bowl with plastic wrap
so that it doesn't get stuck to the bowl, duh.
And we're also gonna be able to use this plastic wrap
to lift it out of the bowl,
and place it on top of our brownie crust.
That's pretty even.
And delicious.
So we're gonna freeze this for about 15 minutes
between each layer.
So I'm gonna pop this in the fridge.
Not the fridge, I'm gonna pop this in the freezer
for about 15 minutes and then we'll come back
and do the strawberry layer
and then we'll do the final layer of pistachio.
Smart Cookie, fact of the day.
Do you know who loved ice cream?
President of the United States
Thomas Jefferson loved ice cream, it's true.
So we think that he was probably exposed to ice cream
for the first time when he was traveling in France
and then when he came back to the United States,
he made that a staple at his dinner parties.
So they made a lot of ice cream at Monticello.
Now, there is a record of a menu
where they talk about ice cream being baked
inside of a pastry which sounds crazy to me.
I don't know how you would be able
to bake that pastry quick enough,
but apparently that's kind of the origin
of where baked Alaska came from was this method
of baking ice cream inside of a pastry.
Baked Alaska is like the next step
where instead of a pastry, it's meringue.
There's a little American history for you.
Thomas Jefferson liked his ice cream.
♪ Strawberry layer ♪
Great okay, who invented the baked Alaska?
Because baked Alaska is only called that here in the U.S.
It actually has lots of different names depending
on where you go in the world.
I know in France they call it omelette norvegienne.
(laughs)
Or something like that,
but it was sometime in the, check in your notes, 1804.
In the early 1800s.
Supposedly the inventor of this dish
was a man named Count Rumford.
Who sounds dastardly because he was.
He was a spy for the British Army
during the Revolutionary War,
and he was run out of the U.S. in 1776.
And in 1804 when he was back
in the U.K. he invented this dish.
Specifically cake, ice cream,
and then the meringue situation that we're gonna get to.
Apparently he was experimenting with egg whites
and discovered that they were very poor conductors of heat
and that's why this dish works,
that's why you can toast the meringue
and the ice cream doesn't melt
because it doesn't conduct heat.
How much time do we have?
Two minutes on the brownies, two minutes.
We're going back in the freezer for another 15 minutes,
then we're gonna do our last layer of pistachio
and then we're gonna chill everything again.
42 seconds.
Very important about brownies,
you must get them out of the oven at 30 minutes.
I don't care if you're like,
"I think the center's a little gooey."
Yes, it should be.
Don't let it go longer than this
because they will burn and then you will have
the burnt taste of chocolate
and it will be sad and bitter like your tears.
Oh yeah.
Nice!
Boom, done.
Look at that beautiful brownie.
Here's what I love about doing a brownie layer.
This is already level,
we're not gonna have to level this
like we would with a cake layer 'cause it's already flat
and anything that eliminates extra steps
I am really in favor of.
Oh, and speaking of that, I have a secret for you.
If you don't wanna make this homemade
and you wanna use a box mix, that is fine.
I won't tell anyone.
It'll be our little secret, okay?
(laughs)
So, brownie or from a box it's fine.
Now this needs to cool.
It can stay in it's pan and cool.
It'll probably take about an hor
for it to come to room temp.
After that you can flip it out,
wrap it in some plastic wrap, pop it in the fridge,
and let it chill overnight
because I got news for you.
This is a two-day process, I'm sorry.
I've led you into this without giving you all
of the details, but this is a two-day thing
'cause we're gonna need this to chill overnight
and that ice cream needs to chill.
The whole dome is gonna take 10 hours.
You are gonna chill like the brownie
and the ice cream and it's gonna be fine, okay?
Great.
This is a homestretch.
Homestretch, folks.
One more layer of delicious pistachio.
I was trying to think of flavors.
If you don't like pistachio ice cream, that's fine.
You can pick other flavors.
I was just trying to think of things
that I thought would be really tasty with chocolate.
I was thinking something kind of nutty
and something kind of fruity would go
well with the chocolate.
So that's how I came up with pistachio.
If you wanna do a matcha green tea, that's fine.
You do you, boo.
Okay.
This one I'm being a little bit more meticulous
just because this is the layer
that's going to be on top of the brownie,
so we really want this to try to get this
to be as even as possible so it'll line up.
♪ Nom, nom, nom, nom, nom ♪
Now, this is gonna go in the freezer overnight
for at least 10 hours.
And then we'll come back to it.
Yeah, 'cause now this has to cool.
Everything has to cool,
so just pretend it's been 10 hours.
Pretend we all went to bed, we woke up,
I put on the same outfit 'cause that's normal
and then we'll move on, it'll be like the next day.
Great.
Time for step three on your baked Alaska,
the piece de resistance.
The reason that this is so fancy, meringue.
So, in the original recipe baked Alaska was truly baked.
You would put the meringue uncooked on the top,
and then pop the whole thing in the oven to get toasted,
but I like the texture of meringue
when it's already been kind of cooked,
so we're gonna pull out our handy dandy double boiler again.
I've got four egg whites that I'm gonna start whisking now.
Once you get those egg whites in,
they have to keep moving 'cause as soon as you don't,
you're gonna start to get scrambled egg whites
which is not what we want.
And to give us a little bit of stability,
I'm using some cream of tartar
and you really just need a pinch which
is why we don't have this measured out
in a cute little bowl.
So we've got quick dissolving sugar.
It's caster sugar.
You can also sometimes find quick dissolve
in the sugar isle or over by coffee.
So the whole point of what we're doing right now
are just to get our egg whites basically up
to about 100 degrees.
You're looking for them to be warm to the touch.
In fact, if your water has come up to a simmer,
you've already put your bowl on there.
You can actually turn your burner off
and just let the residual heat, heat up that bowl.
And you want your sugar to be fully dissolved.
That's gonna keep us from having a grainy texture,
and make sure that this is super smooth.
We ready!
So they're a little foamy.
All of our sugar has dissolved,
and we're just gonna pour the whole mixture
into our standing mixer.
So, while these are still warm,
go ahead and put your whisk attachment on.
Kick it up a notch.
I like to start my meringue on a lower speed.
I think this gives it a little bit more stability
because you're taking more time to get air into those eggs.
You can always knock it up a little bit faster
once you start to see that those peaks starting to happen
and it's starting to thicken up
and get really bright white and glossy.
You can always take it up a little bit from there,
but I think starting at a lower speed
gives it a little bit more stability.
All right, we're a little foamy now.
So I'm gonna pick it up.
I hope that you are enjoying the recipe so far.
Have you had baked Alaska before?
If so, where?
Does this seem totally doable
or does this kind of seem like out of the way,
like this is too much?
'Cause I'll tell you, when I was making this at home,
I am not joking, I literally almost burnt my house down.
- Save me.
(suspenseful music)
- Uh-oh.
(laughing)
I didn't have the safety features
and I didn't really think it through.
There are some amazing behind-the-scene footage.
So if you're interested in that, please check it out.
Let's check our meringue, shall we?
I think we're there.
You're looking for stiff peaks.
Let's see.
Yeah!
Look at that little guy,
he's holding his own, he's doing his thing.
So we've got our chilled brownie layer.
This has been in the fridge overnight.
Let's go get our ice cream.
That has also chilled overnight.
Frosty!
When we lined our bowl, we made sure
that there was some extras that we could actually use this
as handles to try to get this ice cream out.
I think I'm gonna get a towel and get some hot water
and use that to kind of warm the bowl up a little bit
so that we can get this out
of there 'cause it's a little frozen.
♪ Yeah, hold a cannon ball ♪
♪ Let it go, let it go ♪
(laughing)
Great, so this is just a warm, damp towel.
We're just gonna warm this up a little bit.
Elise!
(laughing)
It's done!
Yes.
You've watched me struggle, you might struggle,
we're all gonna struggle in our lives
and then it's gonna teach us something
and it's gonna be fine.
Okay.
Look at that ice cream dome, it's an ice cream dome.
All right, time to get your meringue out.
Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.
You don't wanna waste any of it, it's delicious.
Okay.
So we're just gonna put this on there.
Now, luckily this has been freezing
for probably 12 hours at this point.
So I'm not super worried about my ice cream starting
to melt immediately, it's gone be fine.
(optimistic music)
Smart Cookie fact of the day,
where does the name baked Alaska come from?
The chef at the Delmonico restaurant in New York decided
to make a dessert to celebrate
the U.S.' purchase of Alaska from Russia.
The first name for this was actually
the Florida Alaska Cake.
His method was to broil the meringue in the oven
to get it nice and toasty,
so the Florida was the hot part,
the Alaska was the cold part,
and then somebody was like, "That's not a good name."
And so he changed it to the baked Alaska.
It seems like a lot of meringue,
but you gotta cover every inch.
You can't really have any ice cream hanging out.
So, as I mentioned before, our Count Rumford,
who came up with this recipe,
the reason that he thought the egg whites
would work are because they're very poor conductors of heat.
So, essentially, this Meringue is insulating the ice cream.
It's gonna keep it nice and cold even when it's toasted.
How my swirls looking, swirl-tastic?
All right, if you don't happen
to have a handy dandy kitchen torch, you can go old school
and put this in the oven,
but this is probably the most convenient way to do this.
Nice and toasty.
All right.
Serve immediately.
Let's cut a slice, let's cut a slice.
The great thing about having chilled this ice cream
for this long and the brownie for this long,
everything's pretty frozen still.
Yes!
(optimistic music)
(humming)
All right, see, we've got super dense brownie,
very decadent.
The ice cream layers are perfect,
and then super fluffy meringue
on top that's toasted and delicious.
Yes, mhm.
Everything is a yes.
I hope that you will try this baked Alaska.
I think it's a really fun recipe,
and it was pretty delicious if I do say so myself.