Baked Alaska for The Daring Bakers Challenge – Brown Butter Pound Cake with Brandied Peach Ice Cream

I know that my schedule has been a bit off kilter over the last few weeks and that I have been writing less and putting posts out on odd days. We are exactly two weeks away from Food Blog Forum Atlanta, so things are rather hectic here in the South! I am running about like a chicken with its head cut off a very professional business person trying to pull everything together. Once the big event is over, I promise to be a little more consistent in my posting.

In the meantime, maybe you will forgive me if I post a spiffy version of a timeless classic – Baked Alaska. This lovely dessert is this month’s Daring Bakers Challenge. I was excited about making more homemade ice cream after making it for last month’s Daring Bakers Challenge. You can never have enough ice cream desserts (unless you are the Bunkycooks and then the cake and ice cream stuff must definitely come to a screeching halt after this month)! In case you don’t remember or weren’t here to read it, last month’s challenge was the Chocolate Swiss Roll Cake with “Liquored Up” Cherry Vanilla Ice Cream! Does anyone have a treadmill I can borrow??

Don’t you think the one in the back looks like Casper?

The Daring Bakers Challenge for August was hosted by Elissa of 17 and Baking (she’s actually 18 now, but I guess you can’t change your blog name every year). Jen of Sugar High Friday partnered with Elissa on this challenge and chose brown butter as this month’s theme ingredient (that’s kind of like Iron Chef, but…not!). Elissa then chose to showcase it in the form of brown butter pound cake. Since it’s Summer and August is sooo hot, we were also asked to make homemade ice cream and make either Ice Cream Petit Fours or Baked Alaska combining the two ingredients.

As already mentioned, I chose to make the baked Alaska. The version I used to make many years ago when I was just a kid had chocolate cake or brownie, vanilla ice cream and meringue. That was the traditional way it was made and it was very tasty and impressive to look at. Everyone loves torching food or seeing someone else torch their food! I thought it was pretty nifty when I was young and still do..

This Baked Alaska looks better than some of the others I made!

Since we were required on this challenge to make a brown butter pound cake (19 tablespoons of butter, no less!), I thought that the Brandied Peach Ice Cream would be a nice compliment to the nutty and buttery flavor of the cake. Those two ingredients and a little meringue and there you have it! Baked Alaska!

Well, of course, in the Bunkycooks house, nothing is ever easy, so naturally, I was out of my Brandied Peach Ice Cream (who eats all of this stuff?) by the time I got around to making the cake. So then, I ran to the store to get peach ice cream. It’s August and I live in Georgia (which happens to be the “Peach State”) and I can’t find peach ice cream! You’ve got to be kidding me! I was also amazed that the peaches for sale in the grocery store were from California. What is up with that?! Thankfully, I had success at the next store. Problem solved, so I got over it.