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    Last week, when I told you about making Chocolate Chip Cookie Ice Cream Sandwiches, I promised to tell you what I did with the ice cream "scraps". This Brownie Baked Alaska is the happy outcome! 
    Traditionally, Baked Alaska is made with a white cake as the bottom layer.  The recipe is vintage, created by a restaurant to celebrate the purchase of the Alaskan Territory.  Since that time, there have been many variations to the recipe.  The amazing part about the Baked Alaska is that ice cream gets baked in order to brown the meringue on the outside of the dessert. It is a delight to cut through the layers of meringue, ice cream and in this case, brownie.  
     I liked using the brownie instead of cake because 1-who doesn't love brownie and ice cream together? 2-The brownie is more firm than cake to use as a base and comes out of the pan easily, and 3-a small batch of brownies makes the perfect size to fit without a ton of cake leftovers.  (Then, I would be writing a post about what to do with leftover cake!) 
     For this recipe I did something new!  I made Swiss Meringue, something I had never done before!  It was so easy and the results were amazing!  It was like a marshmallow cream without gelatin.  I don't know why I had never tried it before, but I think I will be going back to this recipe again and again.  

Swiss Meringue

Assemble:

• In advance of the day that you want to make your Baked Alaska, prepare your ice cream by softening it and putting it into a plastic wrap lined round bowl to form it into a dome shape.  Re-freeze it until quite firm.  The plastic wrap will allow you to remove the ice cream from the bowl.  I didn't do that step because at first I didn't know that I was making a Baked Alaska, so I had to heat the bottom of my bowl to remove the ice cream.  It worked, but lining the bowl with plastic wrap would have been easier. Also, normally people make their Baked Alaska with an entire carton of ice cream so that the dome is larger than mine.  But since we were using scraps, ours is more pie like.
• Bake your favorite brownie recipe in a round pan that will match the size of your ice cream dome.  My ice cream was in a smallish Pyrex bowl, so I used a brownie mix that I had on hand and baked it in an 8" round cake pan.  When I make a larger recipe than this one, I will use my favorite brownie recipe that you can find here. 
• When cool, put your brownie circle on top of the bowl of ice cream and invert the ice cream on top of it.  Replace into the freezer while you make the meringue.
• When the meringue is ready, peel the plastic off of the ice cream and cover the entire ice cream and cake with the meringue.  
• Now, brown the meringue.  You can do that in the oven at a 425 degree temperature for just a few minutes or do what I did and use your kitchen torch to brown it.  (I love using the torch! There is a little pyromania in all of us!) 
• Return the Baked Alaska to the freezer until you are ready to serve it.  Hopefully in a couple of hours so that it will have time to be very frozen.  

    You can use any flavor of ice cream that you wish.  Ours was Neapolitan, which gave the nice surprise of not knowing what flavors might be predominant in each slice.  But, mint chocolate chip is a favorite or anything that you may love. 
     This recipe was much easier than I imagined it was going to be and got lots of oos and ahhs from the kids. I hope that you will give it a try!  

This post contains affiliate links. I will be compensated for purchases made through those links at no additional cost to you. All views expressed are my own. Thank you for your support!
​

    When you have grandchildren around like my husband I do this summer, you'll discover that it is important to have Popsicles and other cool treats on hand for the middle of a hot day stuck at home.  Those treats always seem to cheer everyone right up!  One day, I happened to find some chocolate cookie ice cream sandwiches on sale at the grocery store and they quickly became a favorite around here.  My grandkids and I decided to try to make a batch of our own!  They came out really good and delicious and making them together added to our fun! 
     We made our basic cookie recipe, but left out the butter and substituted all shortening because we didn't want the cookies to spread too thin. When they are made with shortening, they tend to stay a little thicker and hold their shape better.  We were also careful to use a cookie scoop filled just right so that our cookies would be uniform for the sandwiches.  My granddaughter became quite adept at it. 

    The kids couldn't decide if they wanted chocolate, vanilla or strawberry ice cream filling, so we bought Neapolitan and made everyone happy!  There are so many flavors to choose from!  I just kept it simple this time.  Personally, I would have chosen mint chocolate chip! 
       After the cookies were baked, we matched them up with each other for the sandwiches.  Next, I tore off the cardboard from the ice cream and sliced it into layers.  My grandson used a cookie cutter that was the same diameter as the cookies themselves to cut out circles of ice cream.  My granddaughter scooped them up with a little brownie server and placed them into the cookie sandwich.  I wrapped them up with plastic wrap and put them into the freezer.  We had quite the assembly line going! 

    We put the scraps of ice cream in a bowl and refroze them!  I have a special surprise using them coming on a post in the near future! 
      The cookie sandwiches froze up nicely! 

     As you can see, I wasn't too careful about the depth that I sliced the ice cream, so some of the sandwiches are thicker that others.  But, no one has complained yet! 
      Another nice thing about making these treats in advance, they are easy to pass out with no mess!  I hope you try this special summer treat! 

Sometimes I think about how our grandparents, great grandparents, and maybe even our parents grew up having dessert as part of their dinner fairly regularly. My mother in law came to visit about a month ago and was talking about how every Sunday night there was pie. Her mom would bake a pie once a week. Once a week!

I love baking desserts, but I generally avoid making dessert for dinner because it takes extra time, and then there are all the extra calories. Dessert is usually reserved for when we're having people over.

Sometimes though, I think about having Sunday dinner with dessert.

With that thought in mind, I baked this cake yesterday.

We shared our Chocolate zucchini cake recipe and I thought about baking that because I had some zucchini, but I also had bananas and thought maybe a non-chocolate cake would be nice.

So I did some experimenting and came up with this zucchini banana cake with a delicious cream cheese frosting. We all enjoyed it, and really, you get the added bonus of knowing that even though you're eating cake, there is a vegetable AND A fruit in it, zucchini and banana! A great marriage for a great, moist cake that you can say is healthy (er)!

It's a win win.

Although, I did decide I'd probably hold off on Sunday night desserts until we have more children and they are a bit older. Because, that leaves a lot of cake to finish off during the week, and I have a husband who doesn't eat leftovers. It's really not helpful.

​YOU can make this cake, and it will be a hit!

​I threw my zucchini in the food processor because it is faster. I chopped them up until they looked like this.

I threw the zucchini in last and just left it sitting on a paper towel to absorb moisture until I was ready for them.

This zucchini banana cake is also easy to make gluten free. I just substituted regular flour for Bob's Red Mill 1 to 1 Gluten Free All Purpose Flour and it still turned out great!

Also, if you wanted to make it vegan you could substitute the eggs for flax eggs and instead of cream cheese frosting, make coconut whipped cream instead! I might try that the next time because I do think the whipped cream would go perfectly with the light taste of this cake!

​Happy baking!

​**This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links. ​  But, all opinions expressed are my own.

Hey Alicia here.

We originally posted this recipe last year in May, but I live in a different state and didn't get to try the cake the first time around. So, I made it recently with a giant zucchini my friend gave me from her garden and it was seriously THE BEST CAKE I'VE EVER HAD. It was fluffy, moist, soft, chocolatey, deliciousness. It was light and airy. I wanted to make this cake again before it was even  all gone. I especially love that this cake doesn't  need frosting. The brown sugar chocolate chip topping was PERFECT! 

I decided we need to share this recipe again because now Is the time of year when people start finding huge zucchini in their yards that are perfect for baking. Try this, you will NOT regret it. Seriously, I'm considering not eating zucchini any other way from now on.

To really make your cake fluffy make sure you cream the butter and sugar really well, until they are light and fluffy and almost increase in volume. Doing this helps to trap air into the batter. Then I repeated this process when I added the egg in (beating it for a little longer to fluff up the wet ingredients). It made it amazing. Go and make this cake and  be amazed at the results. You won't regret it!

​Original Post Below:

    My DIL's mom, Anita gave me a giant zucchini.  Yes, we know that the smaller ones are the ones you are supposed to pick to cook up for a delicious dinner veggie.  But, if you have ever grown zucchini, they somehow have a way of hiding until finally one day there is a giant one laying there taunting you to do something with it.  Anita found this particular one before it had a chance to become extraordinarily huge, but it was big enough for me to make 2 recipes out of it!  Today I will share with you the first thing I made with it.  It is The Best Chocolate Zucchini Cake Ever! 

    When Anita handed me the zucchini, she said, "Here! Make some zucchini bread!"  I had every intention of doing that and taking her a loaf.  But then one afternoon a couple of days later, I looked in the fridge and realized that I needed to use that zucchini and the idea of a chocolate zucchini cake came into my head.  I had heard about them before but never made one.  I as so glad that I did because this cake came out so moist and delicious, much better than any zucchini bread I had ever made!  This particular recipe was adapted from an old church recipe compilation.  It doesn't need frosting because it has a brown sugar, chocolate chip topping that is perfect!  
     Now, here is my secret "oops" moment that caused this cake to be so moist, I believe.  I used my food processor to grate the zucchini.  I accidentally left the chopping blade down in the bottom of the food processor!  What I ended up with was coarsely chopped, slightly pureed zucchini.  It was almost like a very thick applesauce, only zucchini.  Well, I couldn't waste it, so I went ahead and made the cake anyway! It was an amazing success.  I took it to our church choir practice to share it.  It was a hit!  

​3winksdesign's Moist Chocolate Zucchini Cake

   Even if you don't have a giant zucchini, you can use regular sized ones for this recipe.  Later, I will give you the recipe for what I did with the rest of the zucchini! 
   Have you ever made a silly mistake that ended up making your recipe more delicious?  Let me know in the comments! 

     If you don't have any zucchini at all for this recipe, here is one that Lindsey made for Memorial Day last year! 

Find that pie and many others, not included in the blog, in our Pie Book, available on Etsy!