Here's a little background, courtesy of our friends at Wikipedia!
Baked Alaska (also known as glace au four, omelette à la norvégienne, Norwegian omelette and omelette surprise) is a dessert made of ice cream placed in a pie dish lined with slices of sponge cake or Christmas pudding and topped with meringue. The entire dessert is then placed in an extremely hot oven for just long enough to firm the meringue.[1] The meringue is an effective insulator, and the short cooking time prevents the heat from getting through to the ice cream.
The name 'Baked Alaska' was coined at Delmonico's Restaurant in 1876 to honor the recently acquired American territory. Both the name 'Baked Alaska' and 'omelette à la norvégienne'/'Norwegian omelette' come from the low temperatures of Alaska and Norway.
The Chinese first had the idea of a similar dessert, which used pastry instead of meringue. It was the French who brought in the meringue and made the actual first Baked Alaska, which they called omelette à la norvégienne ("Norwegian omelette").
Other variations
A variation called Bombe Alaska calls for some dark rum to be splashed over the Baked Alaska. Lights are then turned down and the whole dessert is flambéed while being served.
The process was simplified in 1974 by Jacqueline Halliday Diaz who invented a baking pan for Baked Alaska called Cūlinique that forms a fillable hollow in the cake that may be filled with ice cream.
In 1969, the recently invented microwave oven enabled Hungarian physicist and molecular gastronomist Nicholas Kurti to produce a reverse Baked Alaska (also called a "Frozen Florida")—a frozen shell of meringue filled with hot liquor.
