Mr. Bean and Baked Alaska

The first picture of all three girls on my memory card for 2011:
 The first morning of the new year found the girls all cuddled up watching Mr. Bean's Holiday. When Dave picked out the movie thinking the girls might be amused, I had my doubts. But they absolutely love it, and have watched it no fewer than three times. They've also asked us to check the library registry to request other Mr. Bean titles. Mr. Bean is a constant topic of dinner table conversation and I don't entirely understand the fascination or what it says about the girls' sense of humor. I think he's strange, but seeing them laugh at him makes him funny.

The first day of the new year also brought my first culinary misadventure of 2011. I decided earlier in the week that a fun new year's day treat for us would be to make Baked Alaska (an ice cream cake dessert). Nevermind that I had only made this before once in my life and it was over 14 years ago in Senior Foods Home Economics. Already sensing the recipe for disaster?

Dave had a preoccupation with my plans to make this dessert. He asked me questions about it several times in the couple of days that spanned between the day I looked up the recipe and the actual day of preparation. Now, you have to understand that he NEVER asks me questions about ANYTHING food related. He just eats what I put on the table. He said he didn't like the name of the dessert and kept thinking I was going to prepare some kind of seafood and try to pass it off for dessert. I told him he was going to like it so much that he would ask for it to be his birthday (which was only three days away) dessert. I should have stopped short of bragging.


 Everything started out just fine. We made the cake layer and let it freeze. Then we spread on the ice cream layer, all was well. I had some difficulty with the meringue, which is where all the problems of this relatively easy dessert took root. I didn't have enough meringue prepared to cover all 3 cakes at once, so I had to make a second batch. In retrospect, the fact that I decided to make 3 Baked Alaskas to accommodate everyone's choice of ice cream flavor was a huge lapse in judgment. I'm not sure under what circumstances I thought our family could eat three ice cream cakes in one sitting.

During the time it took to make the second batch of meringue, something must have happened to the meringue on the first two cakes, because during the baking process it didn't hold and what we ended up with was a mess of somewhat melted ice cream, slippery meringue and soggy cake. At least one cake turned out okay, and it was Dave's:


 The strawberry and vanilla ice cream one that looks reasonably close to the recipe. We did try to eat the other two, and they tasted good, they just didn't look very pretty! Emma loved the mint chip one.

Happy Birthday, Honey. We love you! And if you are in the mood for three partially eaten Baked Alaskas that are now as hard as bricks, I know just the place!