Welcome to the New Age of the Baked Alaska

Although a few dubious inventors have been credited for being the first to combine sponge cake, ice cream, and toasted meringue, the more established origin story is that, in 1867, chef Charles Ranhofer, a French expatriate, offered it for the modern-day equivalent of $40 at Delmonico’s, America’s first fine dining restaurant. A few decades later, in his 1894 cookbook, “The Epicurean,” Ranhofer, who was known for his allusions to politics and culture in the names of his dishes, christened it the Alaska-Florida, in reference to the U.S. purchase of Alaska from the Russian empire, the two states also faithfully representing the dessert’s irresistible hot-cold counterpoint. The recipe called for vanilla cake, apricot marmalade, vanilla and banana ice creams, and oven-finished meringue. Today, the individual portion-sized baked Alaska served at Delmonico’s is essentially the same as Ranhofer’s (walnut-spice cake now makes up the base and banana gelato instead of ice cream).  

My own first encounter with baked Alaska, in the early 2000s, was on a cruise ship, from Maine to Nova Scotia, during what is evidently a common occurrence on cruise ships: the baked Alaska parade. This isn’t unusual — the dessert has a long association with cruise ships. Ten years after its appearance at Delmonico’s, Mary Foote Henderson, suffragist and wife of John B. Henderson, the Missouri senator responsible for introducing the 13th amendment, recalled the German Steamer Baked Ice-Cream that she had on a transatlantic journey, in her cookbook, “Practical Cooking and Dinner Giving.” 

Did I lasso my dinner napkin in the air, mid-parade, to the tune of “Hot Hot Hot”? I can’t recall, and wouldn’t admit it if I had, but the baked Alaska made such an impression that I cited it as my favorite, years later, while working in the kitchen at a retreat center on the Big Island of Hawaii. During a pre-shift meeting, as part of some icebreaker, the crusty lead pastry chef, who incidentally had lots of cruise ship experience, said of my pick: “That’s the most white trash dessert there is.”

But as it would happen, I am not the first to take flack for my love of baked Alaska. Examples of it being lobbed into a once-faddish category go back as far as 1977, when former New York Times food critic, Craig Clairborne, told an admiring reader it’s “not much in vogue any longer.” And in 2018, a Bon Appétit writer called it “an entirely unapproachable and totally outdated dish from the canon of 1950s Americana cuisine” — before making store-bought queen, Ina Garten’s version. 

And yet restaurants that have served baked Alaskas for decades would like a word. Much like its perennially lambasted sibling, flourless chocolate cake, baked Alaska consistently takes the cake as the most popular dessert on the menu. In Cambridge, Mass., at eastern Mediterranean restaurant Oleana, a version with a coconut macaroon base, coconut ice cream, and passionfruit caramel has been turning heads since 2001. Creator Maura Kilpatrick, who now leads Oleana’s sister bakery, Sofra, says the dessert became so popular that another restaurant put an identical copycat version on their menu, and later removed it, presumably out of shame.

More recently, in 2021, Dauphine’s, a New Orleans-themed restaurant in Washington, D.C., added a bananas Foster-inspired variation, and when the historic Gage & Tollner reopened in New York, the executive pastry chef at the time, Caroline Schiff, added a version with three flavors of ice cream: amarena cherry-vanilla, dark chocolate, and mint. In both cases, the restaurants churn their ice creams in-house, part of a labor-intensive three-day process. 

Gage & Tollner’s current pastry chef, Kathryn Irizarry, connects the resurfaced demand for baked Alaskas to the search for joy, excitement, and comfort in everyday life. “I’m not saying nostalgic desserts are going to heal everyone’s inner child,” she says, but “with so much conflict, stress, and tension in today’s world, a lot of people are looking for moments of escapism to a simpler time.” 

That might be why today’s baked Alaska bump isn’t just about fond memories. Somehow, it takes us back, while at the same time appeases the post-pandemic hunger for maximalism and more-is-more escape. The craving translates across geography. Take the two Texas versions, served at Bludorn in Houston and Billy Can Can in Dallas; both evoke campfire s’mores and cowboy cooking. There’s a graham cracker-Texas sheet cake crust at Billy Can Can, and decorations like tempered chocolate in the shape of wood logs have been used to accessorize the seasonally changing versions served at Bludorn.  

Which is to say that even Texas can get in on the 150-year history of  the baked Alaska. And why wouldn’t we? Its maximalist visual impact, its pleasurable hot-cold effects on the tongue, and our communal longing for dishes that evoke another, more gracious time, have universal appeal. Through the endless copies and updates, its true beauty will always endure.