Research Writing is Like Baked Alaska
When I help students understand the basic reasoning behind research
writing, I often say “Research writing is like Baked Alaska. Do you know
what a Baked Alaska is?” I always get back a confused, laughing “No.”
Purposely, I pick this food because:
- I am pretty sure few people have heard of it and I need to refer to something you don’t know before you do it and
- I just love the 1950s kitchen where cakes like this would have
been the norm. I mean, ice cream inside a baked cake! And served by
someone in pearls and an A-line skirt. Just imagine!
But I’m getting off track. OK, back to writing.
If I asked you to go make a Baked Alaska, what would be the first
thing you would do? You would probably Google it. Totally OK. Everyone Googles. Asking questions is the first step.
You might look ‘Baked Alaska’ up in several cookbooks. You would
gather a few recipes that you would consider your main guides and you
would keep rereading those recipes. Congratulations, you have started
your literature review.
You might look up several recipes and compare the ingredients, or
the style of making. Do you have a nine inch pan or a ten inch pan? Does
it matter? What if you want to use chocolate ice cream instead of
strawberry? Is your oven big enough? Can you whip the meringue by hand
or with a mixer? You are determining your methods.
Once you head into the kitchen, do you start just randomly throwing
flour, sugar, and eggs around hoping that a dessert will somehow
happen? No. You carefully measure the ingredients in the proper order
and follow the instructions. You are specifying your tools and techniques.
You would keep at your baking until your food creation is complete.
A wondrous cake, ice cream, and meringue dessert that you’d quickly
take a photo of and post up to your social media accounts. You have
communicated your results and conclusion.
You have completed a research writing cycle. Just like with baking,
you might have ideas to try to make Baked Alaska again. This time the
oven needs to be hotter, or you will use sponge cake instead of yellow
cake. You have joined the academy of researchers, asking questions, setting up experiments, gathering data, and communicating results.
Well done! Congratulate yourself! And here, have a piece of this lovely thing called Baked Alaska.
This article was originally posted to LinkedIn on November 22, 2018. This post was updated on April 3, 2026 with a better font and deletion of the missing images.