Bombe Frou-Frou

Bombe Frou-Frou (a domed frozen dessert of vanilla ice cream, rum-lightened yolk cream, and candied fruit) teaches the architecture of a bombe glacée: one firm frozen layer enclosing a softer one. The true thing to know before touching a pan is that liquid decides whether the center sets. Soak the candied fruit in rum, certainly, but drain and blot it thoroughly; the syrup it sheds would slacken the cream.

The original entry assumed a pastry station holding vanilla ice cream and a separate bombe preparation, a purpose-made metal mould, and salted ice ready for freezing between operations. At home, good bought ice cream replaces a second churn, a chilled stainless-steel bowl replaces the bombe mould, and your freezer replaces the packed ice. That repeated brigade handling was scaffolding and can go. Chemiser le moule, clothing the mould with an even vanilla shell, and making a proper pâte à bombe, egg yolks expanded with hot sugar syrup, are the dish and must stay. One cook, one stove, one evening, then a night's freezing.

Cut it and you should see a smooth ivory shell around a pale gold center, with candied fruit running through it like small bright windows. Before you make the syrup, give the drained fruit twenty quiet minutes in its sieve and blot away every wet gleam. That step decides the cut.