Celebrate Baked Alaska Day

The Baked Alaska Parade is one of the much-derided rituals of holidays aboard cruise ships. Modernists may hate it, but traditionalists love the moment when waiters march through the restaurant carrying their desserts aloft, often with the lights dimmed and sparklers ablaze.
I was secretly delighted during my Red Sea cruise on Thomson Celebration last week when the parade was a fitting conclusion to the Gala Dinner. Especially when, as one of the guests at the Captain’s table, I was serenaded by a group of singing restaurant staff.
Imagine my surprise today to discover that February 1 is Baked Alaska Day, celebrating the confection that combines sponge cake and hot, toasted meringue, with still-frozen ice cream inside. It’s the sheer impossibility of it, as much as the flavour, that makes it such an enjoyable sweet.
But where did it originate? One website supplies four different theories, each of them eminently plausible. It could have been a Chinese creation, for example, or it could have been devised by the chef at Delmonico’s in New York to celebrate the Alaska purchase when the USA bought the state from Russia in 1867.
Wherever it was first devised, let’s take the opportunity to celebrate Baked Alaska Day, and look forward to the next opportunity for a cruise ship parade.