Banoffee Baked Alaska

A classic dessert from the 1970's, the baked alaska has somewhat lost it's original identity. Delmonicos in New York is the birth place of the Baked Alaska, created in 1867 and originally called Alaska Florida.

Baked Alaska is constructed with a sponge base, topped with fruit and ice cream, all of which is encased by swiss meringue and glazed. The original recipe used banana ice cream, but nowadays you usually find a vanilla ice cream centre.

My thought is to combine the original banana component with one of my favourite British desserts ..... BANOFFEE PIE! I could have a banana ice cream, a caramel ice cream or even a vanilla ice cream in order to to replicate the banoffee flavour profile. For my fruit layer, I only really have one choice......banana. This kicks the banana ice cream out of the picture. One of my favourite elements of banoffee, is the 'offee. In other words, that caramel you are left with after boiling a can of condensed milk! I love the texture of the caramel, but I would lose it if I used a toffee flavoured ice cream .........or would I?

Luckily for me, Haagen-Dazs do an unbelievable ice cream called Dolce de Leche. It is a toffee ice cream with blobs of that lovely caramel laced all the way through it. PERFECT! Two birds with one stone.

So, I have the fruit and Ice cream sorted, now for the base and the meringue. I feel that the classic sponge base in Baked Alaska doesn't do anything for textural contrast. So, I'm thinking a biscuity base similar to that found in a Banoffee Pie. Perhaps the addition of some almonds would also work nicely. I like almonds as their flavour isn't overly intrusive, compared to hazelnuts of peanuts for example.

Finally, I rekon a vanilla flavoured Italian meringue will finish off the flavour profile nicely!!!

Recipe and pictures to follow when I get round to trying this out!