Bombe Alaska recipe: Go retro this Christmas!

OUR grandmothers would be proud. Old-school recipes are in fashion this Christmas but modern day mums are putting their own twist on the classics.  

Christmas Trifles

OUR grandmothers would be proud. Old-school recipes are in fashion this Christmas but modern day mums are putting their own twist on the classics.

Michelle Southan, Food Editor at Good Taste, said "I've been working in food magazines for two decades now and this really has been the year of retro. Maybe it's nostalgia for times when life was fun, and not so serious.

"It just had to be a Bombe Alaska for the Christmas cover, then we started getting excited about all things retro, so we went to town inside the issue as well, with updates on loads of 70s favourites like trifle, egg nog and lobster mornay. It's all about feel-good food and flavours."

To help you get your retro on, here is a a recipe for raspberry brownie trifles from this year’s Australian Good Taste December issue – out now.

Raspberry brownie trifles

Serves 8

Prep 1 hour (+ 5 mins standing & 11/2 hours chilling time)  

Cooking 5 mins

3 Gelatine Leaves

200g raspberries

55g (1/4 cup) caster sugar

250ml (1 cup) cold water

300g bought chocolate brownies, cut into small pieces

2 tbs Cointreau liqueur

400g thick vanilla custard 

300ml ctn thickened cream, whipped

200g raspberries, to decorate

1. Place the gelatine leaves in a bowl and cover with water. Set aside for 5 minutes to soften. 

2. Stir the raspberries, sugar and water in a saucepan over medium heat for 3-4 minutes or until sugar dissolves. Process in a food processor until smooth. Strain through a fine sieve into a bowl. Discard seeds. Squeeze excess liquid from gelatine leaves. Stir into the raspberry mixture until dissolved. Chill for 30 minutes or until thick and syrupy.

3. Divide brownie among eight 180ml (3/4-cup) glasses. Drizzle over Cointreau. Top with jelly. Chill for 1 hour or until set. 

4. Spoon custard over jelly. Top with cream and raspberries.  

You can’t hold down the Christmas cheer (or enthusiasm for all things retro) in the Good Taste office at this time of year. Editor in Chief, Brodee Myers-Cooke, said "The dishes are retro, but the recipes definitely are not. You won't find them in your mother's recipe books. The bombe on the Christmas cover is a perfect example. It has everything we love about the traditional Bombe Alaska with the golden torched meringue, the cake encased ice-cream, but Michelle's twist is genius. She's taken retro and remastered it with a 2012 flavour palette. The result is amazing - it literally is "the bombe"!

Recipe: Kathy Knudsen

Photography: Jeremy Simons