Serious Eats: Recipes
Serious Heat: Favorite Sweet + Heat Dessert: Bananas Foster Upside-Down Cake
[Photograph: Bill Milne]
Don't be under the misconception that all spiciness is required to shoot your taste buds into oblivion. Some of the best sweet treats add just a touch of heat into the mix. They incorporate a hint of flavor, like chocolate and cinnamon heightened with chile powder in a sultry Mexican hot chocolate. Here are a few of my personal favorite "sweet plus heat" combinations for desserts.
- Caramel + Chipotle
- Dark Chocolate + Ancho Chile Powder
- Tamarind + Sambal Oelek
- Strawberries + Black Peppercorns
- White Chocolate + Wasabi
- Tropical Fruit + Jalapenos
- Limes + Habanero Chiles
And in honor of both the Super Bowl win of the Saints and Mardi Gras next week, here's a recipe that has made it straight into my "must-have" file, a slightly spicy spin of the French Quarter classic made into a cake: the Bananas Foster Upside-Down Cake. The caramel is slightly enhanced by chile powder and black pepper in a gooey banana topping on top of a moist banana cake.
What's your favorite spicy way to enhance a dessert?
Bananas Foster Upside-Down Cake
Yield: 1 cake
Zest Factor: Mild
Be sure to use ripe bananas for this cake, or the banana slices will become hard after the cake cools.
Recipe by A.J. Fox for Chile Pepper magazine.