Bombe Alaska | The Bell Jar
'Oh-oh!' Betsy said sympathetically. She must have seen the tears that plopped down into my dessert dish of meringue and brandy ice cream, because she pushed over her own untouched dessert and I started absently on that when I'd finished my own. I felt a bit awkward about the tears, but they were real enough.
The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath
It may be winter but my love for ice-cream, frozen yoghurt and generally any decadent frozen confectioner is not disappearing. A toasty on the outside, and chilly on the inside dessert seemed to be the perfect accompaniment for the vaguely dismal weather.
The Bell Jar is one of the first novels I read that seemed to stick with me - it was when I was sixteen and attempting to both embrace (what I thought) was my true nature via skinny jeans and lip piercings and still feel pretentious and somewhat arrogant by reading, what I deemed to be, books of consequence and feminist prose.
It was fascinating I think because of the somewhat new nature that the style of the book had. I was used to books with clear beginnings, middles and happy endings. Hobbits taking a ring to a volcano, Harry and the trio defeating Voldemort etc etc. This was one of my first looks at a book that didn’t feel the need to spell out every action that occurs, or to paint a traditional, in your face happy ending for the reader.
It’s an occasional re-read every now and then, sometimes when I’m feeling a little melodramatic and have the need to revisit a protagonist that captures that in a way. It was on one of my last reads that I began to take note of the food throughout - along with the stomach turning crab salad that is served during a luncheon, Esther also partakes of a dessert dish made from meringue and brandy ice-cream.
I am sure that the dessert served that night would have been a touch more elegant that what I made - I’m sure this recipe is just as delicious. I exchanged the brandy for rum because despite myself and my housemates have an extensive liquor cabinet, we did not have any brandy at the time.
*Note: I do not eat eggs, thus the chickpea meringue. Honestly, it’s delicious and probably tastes better than actual egg meringue. But if you really can’t bring yourself to it, just google a quick Italian meringue recipe and that’ll work just as well.
Chocolate Rum Bombe Alaskas
Makes approx. 8 - 10
Ingredients
Chocolate Rum Ice-cream
2 x 400ml can coconut milk (make sure it’s full fat)
2 tbsp corn starch
1.2 cup cocoa powder
1tsp vanilla extract
1 cup white sugar
Big pinch salt
60ml spiced rum (if you want to stay traditional, use brandy)
Italian Meringue *see note
1 x can of chickpea brine (aquafaba)
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup sugar
Whisk together all your ingredients in a medium sized saucepan.
Heat on medium until warmed, stirring continuously as the mixture thickens (it is does not thicken add a little more corn starch in.)
Place the ice-cream mix into your pre chilled freezer bowl and leave to churn until the ice-cream thickens considerably (it took mine close to 40 minutes to thicken properly.)
Move bowl to the freezer once it has reached a good thickness - best to leave for a few hours to really freeze through at this stage.
Beat around 2/3 of the aquafaba in a mixer with the cream of tartar until soft peaks form.
During this, heat the remaining aquafaba and the sugar together in a saucepan - bringing the temperature as high as possible before the mixture starts to caramelise.
While the mixer is still going, slowly drizzle in the heated aquafaba and sugar into the meringue mix.
Add in the vanilla and beat on high until stiff peaks form.
You can either use a piping bag at this stage to pipe the meringue around the ice-cream or just a spoon to sort of build it up - either way it’s going to be delicious.
I just used my coconut cream cake recipe for the cupcakes and omitted the coconut - but you can honestly use any cake recipe and it’s fine, the real star of the dish is going to be the marshmellow-y meringue and booze-laden ice-cream anyway.
Slice your cupcakes in half so you’ve got nice even circles to work with. Each of these needs a good, round scoop of ice-cream on it, making sure that you leave space around the sides for the meringue to be piped up.
Carefully pipe or spoon the meringue around the ice-cream, it should be thick enough to hold it’s shape so that you can complete all of them in one go.
Now it’s the fun part, using a blow torch carefully toast the meringue until all sides are a nice golden brown.
And the best part of the entire process, eating it! Make sure to serve straight away.