Impress your guests with this amazing Christmas dessert! Blow torch the meringue in front of your guests for a special foodie show. Then slice through meringue to reveal a fluffy almond flour cake and a duo of delicious ice creams studded with blueberry chocolate chunks and crispy honey roasted hazelnuts. Festive extravaganza!
Prep time: 45 mins
Cook time: 40 mins
Chilling time: 6 hours
Serves: 12 people
Ingredients
- 1 tub (1 litre) Killinchy Gold Dulce de Leche ice cream, softened
- 1 tub (1 litre) Killinchy Gold Chocolate Hazelnut ice cream, softened
- 1 bar (80g) Blues Bros blueberry chocolate, in chunks
Honey roasted hazelnuts:
- 1 cup Fresh Life blanched hazelnuts
- 1 tbsp liquid honey
- ½ tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp orange zest, finely grated
Almond flour cake base:
- 200g Fresh Life gluten free almond flour
- 3 eggs
- 100g unsalted butter, softened
- 100g brown sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tbsp grated orange zest
- 2 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt
Meringue:
- 150g egg whites
- 300g caster sugar
Equipment:
- A blow torch
- Kenwood Titanium Chef Pâtissier XL mixer
Method
- Make the honey roasted hazelnuts: Heat oven to 170°C. Line a baking tray with baking paper. Toss all the roasted hazelnut ingredients together on the prepared tray. Bake until lightly toasted, for 5-7 minutes. Loosen the hazelnuts and let cool.
- Line a 20cm (or smaller) diameter 2 litre capacity pudding basin or bowl with 3 sheets of plastic wrap.
- Add dulce de leche ice cream to your mixer and mix in chopped blueberry chocolate. Spoon into your prepared pudding bowl and smooth over the top. Add chocolate hazelnut ice cream to your mixer and mix in honey-roasted hazelnuts. Spoon into the pudding bowl (on top of ice cream), smooth over the top, and freeze for 6 hours, or until firm.
- Make the cake: Turn the oven to 180°C. Line a 20 cm round cake tin. Place butter, sugar and vanilla in the Kenwood standalone mixer bowl. Beat until pale and creamy. Add eggs, one at a time while the mixer is running. Add orange zest and salt, then almond flour and baking powder. Combine well. Pour in the prepared tin and bake for 25 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Set aside in the pan to cool completely.
- Make the meringue: Turn the oven to 200°C. Line a deep roasting dish with baking paper, pour in the caster sugar and heat in the oven for about 7 minutes.
- Pour the (weighed) egg whites into a mixer and whisk slowly, allowing small bubbles to form, then increase the speed until the egg whites form stiff peaks.
- Take the sugar from the oven. With the mixer on full speed, slowly add the hot sugar into the stiff egg whites, adding 1 tablespoon at a time, making sure the mixture comes back up to stiff peaks after each spoonful of sugar. Continue to whisk at full speed until the mixture is stiff and glossy (you shouldn’t be able to feel the texture of the sugar between your fingers), roughly 5-7 minutes.
- Assemble bombe alaska: Place cake on your serving plate. Invert ice cream heap onto cake. Remove plastic wrap. Trim the cake to the size of the ice cream heap if needed. Spread with meringue to cover the ice cream and cake completely. Gather everyone’s attention at the serving table, blow torch the bombe Alaska. Enjoy the delicious extravagance!
Tip: If you can’t finish this extravagant dessert in one sitting then store it in the freezer.
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