Banana Flambé

A pumping grand finale for your at-home feast. 

Banana flambé served from a dessert trolley ends the meal with a cloud of banana fragrance and a blaze of glory. This flamboyant dessert lights up the table, puts a smile on people’s faces and is a performance in its own right. We like to invoke showgirl, French Resistance fighter, human rights activist, winner of the Croix de Guerre military medal and banana dancer Josephine Baker when flaming our bananas. She charmed the globe with a skirt of fake bananas, her powerful voice, energetic dancing and sheer brio (little known fact: the huge sculpture above the information desk at Selfridges London is of her). When we do our flaming banana routine, we try to capture her energy and fully leverage the comedic and libidinous potential of the banana.

Do the flaming bit in front of your audience. It lends itself particularly well to a darkened environment, so turn down the lights for maximum impact.
And please note: this recipe is best for adults only!

Candied Roses

Candied food is always a crowd pleaser. Sam’s obsession peaked when he bought two entire candied pineapples. Making them would be laborious and sticky, involving many successive sugar baths and hours of time. Thankfully, our candied roses are super-quick to do but look just as awesome.

The dish began life as a starter but the sweetness confused everyone. It’s a lot more appropriate as a dessert or even as edible table décor. Guests pluck the individual sugar petals nestled within the complete roses. 

Sherbet Snow

As a child, realising that the secret to unlimited sherbet was simply mixing bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) and citric acid with icing (confectioners’) sugar was like discovering the philosopher’s stone. Mountains of sherbet is probably the cheapest and most joyful thing to make for feasting on and the reaction between the acid and alkaline in your mouth is alchemically brilliant.