The Decadent Coffee Dessert That Was A Favorite At Buckingham Palace

Queen Elizabeth II's love of tea is well documented — she was a particular fan of Earl Grey, which she would drink black (that is, without milk or sugar), and frequently hosted tea parties at Buckingham Palace. But what you may not know is that she also had a soft spot for the drink's more caffeinated cousin: coffee.

Her Majesty would sometimes enjoy coffee with lunch or dinner, according to Darren McGrady, who served the monarch and her family as personal chef for 15 years (a career that started with feeding the Queen's corgis and peeling carrots for her horse). Coffee was also a key ingredient in many of her favorite desserts, including a dark chocolate mousse laced with espresso — and it played a leading role in one particularly decadent treat that she liked sharing with guests at dinner parties. "At banquets when the Queen was entertaining, the most popular dessert on the menu often was an ice cream bombe," McGrady revealed in an interview with British website Coffee Friend. "We did a bombe glacée coppelia, which was coffee ice cream filled with praline and decorated with whipped cream and liquor coffee beans." 

An ice cream bombe (or bombe glacée in French) is essentially ice cream molded into a dome shape using a bowl lined with plastic wrap, often with a layer of sponge cake or pie crust acting as a base. Once set, the bombe is removed from the bowl and covered with additional ingredients like hardened chocolate, or the fluffy torched meringue that is a trademark of arguably the most famous ice cream bombe of them all: Baked Alaska. This style of dessert is so-named because of its resemblance to a cannonball or bomb, and was popularized by the famous French chef Auguste Escoffier (who also created dauphine potatoes and peach melba).

Its impressive nature (and the level of skill required to make it) usually sees ice cream bombes reserved for special occasions, a la the dinner parties hosted by Queen Elizabeth II. However this isn't the only time Her Majesty showed off this extravagant dessert — a customized version, named Bombe Glacée Princesse Elizabeth in her honor and made with strawberries grown especially by palace staff inside a hothouse, due to being out of season at the time — appeared on the menu for her wedding to Prince Philip in 1947.

It's clear from Queen Elizabeth II's love for Darren McGrady's ice cream bombe that she had a sweet tooth. Which makes it worth wondering what other treats the monarch liked to indulge in, when the sugar cravings came calling. As previously noted, she was also a fan of the royal chef's coffee-spiked chocolate mousse, but the dessert that is widely considered her favorite (or at the very least, her favorite cake) was even more simple. We're referring here to chocolate biscuit cake: Actually more like a slice, made from crunchy cookie pieces folded through a base of butter, sugar, and melted dark chocolate, chilled, and then topped with chocolate ganache for good measure.

McGrady of course had plenty of practice whipping up this treat for Her Majesty (there's even a recipe for it in "A Royal Cookbook: Seasonal recipes from Buckingham Palace"), telling TODAY prior to her passing: "It is her favorite cake that she eats until it is all gone. If there is anything left when she has it at Buckingham Palace, it then goes to Windsor Castle so she can finish it there. I use to travel on the train from London to Windsor Castle with the biscuit cake in a tin on my knee. It was half eaten." If that doesn't sound like a lady with a serious sweet tooth, we don't know what does.