Daring Bakers August 2010

The August 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Elissa of 17 and Baking. For the first time, The Daring Bakers partnered with Sugar High Fridays for a co-event and Elissa was the gracious hostess of both. Using the theme of beurre noisette, or browned butter, Elissa chose to challenge Daring Bakers to make a pound cake to be used in either a Baked Alaska or in Ice Cream Petit Fours. The sources for Elissa’s challenge were Gourmet magazine and David Lebovitz’s “The Perfect Scoop”. You can find the full recipe printout here.

I went full throttle with this challenge and made both! And I didn’t even have to make 2 pound cakes. I made my brown butter cake in an 8x10 pan and the cook time remained the same. Then I just cut an 8x8 square for the ice cream petit fours and then used the leftover section to cut up for 2 mini baked Alaskas. Between the 2, the petite fours were my favorite. I mean, come on, they were covered in chocolate ganache! The brown butter pound cake was delicious as well, the scraps were delicious straight up with some powdered sugar. My only complaint being that once it was frozen with the ice cream it was too subtle a flavor to detect. That may also be because I used the leftover ice cream from last months challenge, lemon and raspberry gelato, both of which are pretty strong flavors. The ice cream sandwich part was not nearly as long or labor intensive as the recipe makes it sound, the trick is to just got a little at a time so the ice cream doesn’t start to melt. The Baked Alaska was divine with the lemon gelato, it was just like a lemon cream pie! It was great fun to bust out the torch too, I always enjoy that. :)

So thank you Elissa for a fantastic way to use up my ice cream stash!