


What To Bake This Weekend
Prepare for St. Patrick’s Day with a few Irish favorites:
Chocolate Tart with Irish Cream (my friend Sarah Kieffer’s recipe!)
If you’ve recently made one of my recipes, please be sure to leave a rating and review!
Zoë’s Baking Academy
Thank you to everyone who joined my YouTube Live last weekend where I made my Banana Pudding recipe! If you missed it, the replay is available below. I can’t wait to see your banana pudding or Banana Cream Cake (last week’s paid subscriber exclusive!).


Paid Exclusive: Shamrock Baked Alaska
It’s like a Shamrock Shake on fire! This simple, no-churn, eggless ice cream is creamy, and minty. The rich texture comes from whole fat ricotta cheese and whipped cream that’s folded into the mixture just before freezing. To get the most flavor, I use both fresh mint and mint extract. The ice cream recipe is made in a blender or food processor, with no cooking at all. After you blend all of the ingredients until they are smooth, they are poured into hemisphere molds (affil. link) (or an 8-inch bowl) and frozen. Once the ice cream is set, you can add the crunchy, candy-like crust. This keeps the ice cream from melting too fast on the plate.
Pro Tips for the Ice Cream
Use whole fat ricotta for the best texture. You want the fat to make it creamy.
If you prefer the ice cream without the flecks of mint in it, strain it through a fine mesh strainer before adding the whipped cream.
If you use a bowl as a mold that isn’t made of silicone, line the bowl with plastic wrap so you can easily unmold the frozen ice cream.
Pro Tips for the Crust
You can switch the milk chocolate for white chocolate without any other changes. If you want to use dark chocolate, it will work, but make sure the crust layer is no more than 1/16th inch, since the dark chocolate will set even firmer.
The recipe can be made with or without Nutella, but using it helps the texture, and I like the flavor.
To make the crust crunchy, you can use Gavottes a crispy crepes cookie that I break up (see video below), if you can’t find Feuilletine (affil. link), which is the same as Gavottes but already broken into pieces.
Don’t make the crust too thick or it will be difficult to cut when frozen.
Pro Tips for Meringue
I covered my Baked Alaska in vegan aquafaba meringue, but you can use the traditional version, if you wish. I included it in the recipe. Get the aquafaba recipe at the button below.
You can cover the baked Alaska in the meringue and freeze the dessert (uncovered) for a couple of days before torching and serving. You can also torch the meringue ahead of serving and keep in the freezer but it’s more fun to wield the blow torch at the table, carefully! ;)