I’ve always enjoyed cooking. I like experimenting, but with a scientific basis to the experimentation. So when I saw Alton Brown do a program about pushing sugar to its physical limits in order to bring out complex flavors, I had to try it.

All the elements add up to a fun and challenging recipe: many rapid-fire steps, high heat, high margin for error, dangerous steps, and a blowtorch. Seriously, I enjoy recipes like this.

The dish is a dessert. It consists of bananas brulee served with a creamy caramel sauce, a spirograph-design shaped sugar decoration, and vanilla ice cream.

It starts with a couple cups of sugar, some water, and some corn syrup. You cook the three ingredients up to 300 degrees without stirring– quite a feat for someone who likes to stir what they’re cooking like me. Once it hits 300, you can gently stir it up to 340.

At that point, you pull it off the burner and let it cool slightly until the sugar falls off a spoon in a thin, thread-like stream. Drip that out onto parchment paper in spirograph shapes, and return the sugar concoction to the heat.

From there, you cook it until it smokes. Seriously. You actually sit and look for smoke.

Once it smokes you pull it off the heat, add a couple cups of heavy cream into the pan at arms length, and start a violent rapid boil. Return it to the heat for a few minutes, and then take it off the burner to cool. What is left in the pan becomes this ultra-creamy, ultra-caramely sauce with a very complex flavor. Mmmmm.

Once the caramel is cooled, you put it in a squirt bottle so you can use it to decorate the plate.

Next up, the bananas brulee. You grab a couple of bananas and quarter them. You dip each piece of banana in sugar, remove the peel, and set it up on something flameproof. You use your blowtorch on each piece of banana to caramelize the sugar into a solid glass-like sheet of caramel.

Time to serve. Make a spirograph shape on a plate with your caramel. Put a couple of piece of banana down on the plate, glass-side up. Pop on a scoop of vanilla ice cream. More caramel on the ice cream, and then a sugar caramel decorator piece goes on top.

Here’s what you end up with:

Click to enlarge:

The Recipe: Banana Splitsville

Give it a shot– it is a lot of fun to make, and to eat!

Mike