Notes of: Meringue

Behind February’s Mood Board

Welcome to Notes Of! Each month I make a mood board and post it to Instagram as a little creative exercise in thematic thinking. Notes Of elaborates on each month’s theme and includes links to relevant articles, videos, products, and more. 

This month’s mood board came to me as I was reading Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid on Tuesday night. I was only 30-or-so pages in when baked Alaska was mentioned and I got completely derailed, throwing my book to the side to Google away. What did a baked Alaska look like, again? What’s on top…is that whipped cream? The book slid onto the floor as I started fantasizing about throwing a party where we’ll all drink champagne and share a baked Alaska.

Despite how painful this bit of dialogue is, I did enjoy the book.

For the record, it’s not whipped cream, it’s meringue. Somewhere down the rabbit hole I got lost in a sea of fluffy white desserts: vanilla ice cream piled high in a silver dish, whipped cream with a cherry on top, a pavlova covered in flower petals. When I finally found my way back to reality I was hungry, confused, and inspired to make a mood board. So here I am!

“A dessert of beauty…and mystery.” From Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book, 1956

(This is often how it goes, by the way. Someone asked me the other day about how I get started on a project and I gave them an answer, but afterwards I kept thinking about it. How do I get started on a project? Sometimes it’s a ready-set-go thing where I go on a quest for an idea, but oftentimes a random thought completely interrupts whatever it is that I’m doing and my imagination gets away from me. Even just now, as I was writing the last sentence, I looked out the window for ONE SECOND and got stuck in a trance. Daydreaming about daydreaming…yikes.)

But anyway, the mood board. A baked Alaska-themed mood board is simply too specific but I decided to start with meringue and see where it got me: