Bombe Diable Rose

Bombe Diable Rose (pink devil bombe) teaches the architecture of a bombe glacée: a distinct frozen shell, a softer pâte à bombe filling, and a clean slice that reveals both. The one true thing to know before touching a pan is that water has nowhere to hide in a frozen dessert. Halve the candied cherries and dry them thoroughly, or their surface syrup freezes into hard red pebbles inside the cream.

The original assumed a pastry station with moulds buried in salted ice, several frozen preparations ready at once, and hands available to turn the mould while it was clothed. A one-litre metal bowl, a domestic ice-cream machine, and an ordinary freezer are the honest equivalents. Constantly rocking the mould over broken ice was brigade scaffolding and can go; the even strawberry lining, the Kirsch pâte à bombe, and the dried cherries are the dish and must stay. The work fits one cook, one stove, one evening, then the freezer keeps watch.

When it is cut, the bombe should show a clear rose shell around a pale, creamy centre stippled with cherries. Freeze the clothed mould until it is absolutely firm before filling it. That boundary between shell and centre decides the whole dessert.