if you can dream it you can do it

This week's potluck theme was "if you can dream it you can do it!" and for it I decided to challenge myself a bit and make something I have never made before.  I opted for Baked Alaska and the results were pleasantly surprising!  So heres a recipe with some photos so that maybe you can enjoy this too sometime!

I got the recipe from the Ghirardelli Chocolate Cookbook that came out in 1982 (I ave the revised second edition) that I found at the thrift store in North Lake Tahoe this summer.  Ghirardelli is a San Francisco based company so all of the recipes have a California theme and this one was called "Mount Shasta Baked Alaska" which seemed pretty appropriate.  To start you bake a sour cream cake:

Chocolate Sour Cream Cake

2 oz Ghirardelli semi sweet chocolate

1/4 c water

1/3 c butter

1/3 c white sugar

1/3 c brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1 egg + 1 egg yolk, beaten

1/2 c sour cream

1 c cake flour

3/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

melt the chocolate and water together stirring constantly over low heat and set aside.  cream the butter and sugars together and then add the vanilla and eggs and beat until fluffy, mix in sour cream and set aside.  add all the dry ingredients together (sift them together if you can).  next alternate adding the chocolate and dry ingredients to the sugar/butter mix until all is incorporated, batter will be fluffy and stiff.  I used a 9 in spring form pan, buttered the bottom, then laid down wax paper and buttered that too.  pour the batter into the pan and bake at 350 for 30 minutes, let cool completely.  

butter and sugar; dry ingredients; chocolate

 adding chocolate mixture to the batter

adding dry ingredients

the finished batter

Now I baked this dish over the course of 2 days so i'm counting these photos as one day...

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Next its time for the Alaska portion...for this you need a pint of ice cream, flavor of your choice, and you need to let the cake cool completely because that is one of the steps that I botched.  I chose vanilla ice cream and softened it and stirred in some blackberries.  Then you heap it on the middle of the cake, leaving about an inch of cake bare around the edges.  Throw the whole thing in the freezer and let it harden.  This is where I went wrong, my cake felt cool, but still had some residual heat in the center which melted the ice cream into a puddle in the top of the spring form pan even in the freezer.  I recovered quickly though, scraping the ice cream and blackberries off the top while it was still mostly liquid and into a tupperware.  I left both in the freezer overnight and then tried again with much better results in the morning.  I left it in the freezer all day until potluck, then I brought the cake/ice cream combo, a bowl, electric mixer, spatula, measuring spoons, half a cup of egg whites, half a cup of sugar, some vanilla, salt, and cream of tartar with me over to Geoff and James' house for potluck.  Right before we were ready to dig into the desserts (of which there were mannnnyyyy) I whiped the egg whites up to soft peaks, added cream of tartar, salt, and vanilla, then while continuing to mix I added the half cup of sugar and continued until it formed stiff peaks.  This is scooped out and dalloped all over the top of the cake and ice cream to make it look like a snowy mountain top.  I pooped the whole thing into a preheated 450 degree oven for 5 minutes and serve.  Here are the results:

ice cream and cake pile...you can see the mess i made when i melted it...

The Final Product

Yummm.  Yay for potluck!

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