For the last day of Bake Off Week, we’re asked to make a showstopper. Not wanting to make an actual huge showstopper thing (it’d be too much sweets, even for me), I took inspiration from one of the most infamous GBBO challenges of all: Baked Alaska. Even if my efforts failed, I figured, I could at least make jokes about bingate!
But a whole-ass Baked Alaska is also way too much sweets for me and my not-sugar-obsessed partner, so I thought I’d attempt mini Baked Alaskas. Is that a thing? It’s probably not a reasonable thing.
For the base, I made peanut butter blondies–my go-to recipe from Vegan Cookies Take Over Your Cookie Jar–mixed with mini chocolate chips and baked in a mini muffin tin (the word “mini” is really starting to lose meaning the more I type it). At least this way, I have a ton of little muffin…cookie…things that do not require burnt homemade marshmallow fluff to be enjoyable. And storebought chocolate ice cream because my ice cream maker is old and not great. Anyway, I made a lil’ trio of ice cream-topped blondies and popped it in the freezer for about 20 hours.
Making aquafaba meringue was next. I’ve had very mixed success with aquafaba meringue in the past, and frankly it’s not my favorite thing to actually eat–it’s magical and cool and impressive, sure, and it reminds me of childhood and a very specific dessert my mom used to make for special occasions, but on its own, it’s a little bland and sweet. So I have to have a reason to bother. This time I went with the instructions from Vegan for Everybody, half recipe. It always takes forever to get to stiff peaks in my mixer, but it did, eventually, get there.
Without a functional piping bag, it’s not like I can make these super precise, either, so I blobbed it on and used the back of a small spoon to smooth it out and add some little peaks for texture.
Furthermore, I don’t have a lil’ food blowtorch or anything of the kind, since I don’t do this ever. I had to use the broiler in my oven. Which was not a quick as I’d hoped, but it did brown like a nicely toasted marshmallow.
I mean, all right! But what about the interior? Specifically, did the ice cream melt?
Like, of course it did. It was like a tiny tablespoon of ice cream with only a layer of meringue between it and a fucking broiler for however many minutes. It was chocolate soup.
Oh well. The meringue did crack a little bit, which was nice, and it tasted good together overall.
Just, you know. Sweet. So I’m glad we’re moving on to, like, real food.
