This is a somewhat annotated version of a good and
extremely fatty dessert recipe from the
Canadian Living website:
Custard with banana caramel sauce
(serves four)
Ingredients:
custard:
1.75 C whipping cream
.33 C granulated sugar
5 egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
sauce:
.25 C whipping cream
1 C sugar
.5 C water
2 tablespoons butter
2 smallish bananas
custard:
Whisk egg yolks and vanilla together until smooth. Heat whipping cream and sugar on medium until bubbles start to form around the edge. Remove from heat. Whisk hot cream (y goodness) mixture in to the yolks until smoov. Strain through a fine strainer in to a big ol' measuring cup. Pour in to 4 greased custard cups (or ovenproof mugs or something, or even a deep muffin tin if you're desperate). Put the cups in a cake pan with sides about 2 inches high, and fill the pan with enough hot water to come half way up the custard cups. Bake at 300° Fahrenheit for 55 minutes - until the top of the custard is firm and a knife inserted in comes out clean. Let cool on a wire rack for a while (this is important. I didn't, so my custard wasn't firm enough to look cute. However, it was still extremely tasty.) Then pop in the refrigerator for a few hours. (We were really hungry, so we left it in the fridge for an hour, then the freezer for 15 minutes while I made the sauce.)
sauce:
stir sugar and water together in a heavy saucepan at medium heat four about 4 minutes, until the sugar is all dissolved. raise the heat to medium-high and cover while it comes to a rolling boil. uncover and let it boil for about 7 minutes until it turns deep amber. do not stir. resist the urge to stir. when it's turned colour, remove from heat. now, here the recipe says to hold it an arm's length away and avert your face and call the police because ooh, it might spatter as you add the cream and butter, but it's not really that bad if you temper the caramel first by stirring in a table spoon of the cream before you dump the rest in. stir in the cream and butter and stir until it's well mixed and the bubbles die down. let cool for five minutes. slice up the bananas. mix the caramel and the bananas, coating all the slices. mmm.
take the chilled custards out of the fridge and run a knife along the edge of the custard cups and turn them out on to plates. drizzle caramel banana sauce all over until you run out of sauce. mmmmmmm.