Carmelize Your Holiday Dessert

Some friends invited us to dinner a few weeks ago, and I agreed to bring the dessert.  I always like to bring something homemade, and this time I thought I’d try out a new idea I had for a cheesecake.  I hadn’t made one with bananas before, but thought it would be fun to test my recipe. 

I have a real easy, standard cheesecake recipe I’ve used for years.  I’ve made it with different flavors—lemon, orange, strawberry, cherry—and a few more I can’t even recall right now.  I wanted to make a caramelized topping so I could use my cool little baking torch that’s such fun to use. 

  

Here’s all I did to transform my recipe to banana.  When it came to the torching, it seemed like such fun that my husband insisted on firing it up and taking care of the bananas himself.  Well, from the taste of the final product, it was unanimous that our joint efforts were successful.  Tim and Brenda, this one’s for you! 

Caramelized Banana Cheesecake

For the Crust: 

1 ¼ C graham cracker crumbs

(12 crackers 4 ¾ ” x 2 ¼”)

2 T granulated sugar

6 T unsalted butter, melted

¼ t cinnamon 

Crush the crackers in a food processor on in a plastic bag using a rolling pin.  Mix the sugar with the cinnamon.  Combine the crumbs with the sugar mixture and pour in the melted butter. 

With your fingers, press the mixture evenly on the bottom and up the sides of a metal or glass 8 or 9” pie pan.  The crust is now ready for your filling. 

For the Filling: 

Preheat oven to 350º

Set oven rack in center position 

8 oz cream cheese, softened

½ ripe banana, mashed

2 eggs, beaten (room temperature)

½ C sugar

1 t amaretto liqueur 

Blend cream cheese with mashed banana until smooth.  Add eggs, sugar and liqueur and beat until fluffy.  Pour into the prepared crust and bake 30 minutes, or until the filling is set and no longer jiggles.  

While the cake is baking, measure and combine the topping:

For the Topping: 

1 C sour cream

1-1/2 T brown sugar

1 t amaretto liqueur

Remove the cake from the oven, and carefully spread the topping over the top.  Bake 10 minutes longer in the 350º oven.  Remove from oven and cool.  

Big Banana Finish: 

2 bananas, sliced diagonally

Brown sugar for sprinkling over bananas 

Slice the bananas and arrange them on top (see above photo).  Liberally sprinkle brown sugar over the fruit.  With a baking torch, carefully zap the top until the sugar caramelizes.  Chill and serve. 

If you plan to serve the cake in a few hours, continue to finish with the bananas, brown sugar and torch.  Chill at least 1 hour and serve. 

 

If you plan to serve the cake on the following day, cover and refrigerate it, and the day you serve it go ahead with your big fiery banana finish.  

Enjoy!

©Pauline Boren 2009