Baked Alaska - Carrot Cake Style!

This week marked Cheese Week in our plated desserts class, and above is a photo of the dessert we plated - a carrot cake baked Alaska. The components for this dessert included a carrot, raisin and apple salad base, a carrot cake round, a scoop of cream cheese ice cream (our cheese element), ginger Italian meringue, carrot chips, and carrot salad jus.

I have mixed feelings about the flavors in this dessert. I don’t like raw carrots so I didn’t like the carrot salad at all, although I appreciated the cool crunch it brought to the dish. The carrot cake was delicious, though – very moist and just the right amount of spice. The cream cheese ice cream was way too rich for my taste. For me it was just like eating a cold block of cream cheese and a little bit went a LONG way. The bruleed ginger meringue was tasty with just a hint of ginger. The carrot chips were actually one of my favorite elements on the plate. I liked the crunchiness of the garnish and the baking process brought out the natural sweetness of the carrots. I would definitely make the carrot cake and carrot chips again, but I would tone down the cream cheese ice cream and remove the carrot raisin salad altogether.

I loved the plating of the dessert. The carrots added a beautiful pop of color and great height and the bruleed meringue was really interesting visually. The carrot jus was the only thing I might change - it looked a little too pale and watery on the plate for me. Perhaps a thicker and/or darker sauce would look nicer on the white plate, but there's something to be said for using what's readily available so although I didn't like the taste of the carrot salad, I did like that it provided an instant sauce to work with. :-)