Sweet Screw-Up

I've always believed you should never show up to a party without at least calling ahead to ask if the host wants/needs to you to bring something. Even if you just show up with extra ice, you should try to make the evening easier for them whenever possible. So, this Easter I decided my contribution to the afternoon's festivities was going to be a dessert I was recently informed about called Banoffee pie. For those of you who have never heard of Banoffee pie, it is essentially this: a graham cracker crust, caramel, banana slices, more caramel, whipped cream and topped with chocolate shavings. Since I like all of those things (which I feel is the key factor in any dessert you ever try to make) I decided to bring one on Sunday, thinking it would make a new, if unusual addition to the holiday. There are several recipes online I could have picked from and, as we have come to expect on the internet, they all contained varying degrees of difficulty. I could build everything from scratch or I could buy most of the items from the store and simply assemble the concoction. It was up to me to decide how involved with this pie I felt like being. Since I consider myself just a novice in the pie-making world, I went for one of the easier recipes.

Still, for as many steps as I tried to cut out, there was one I couldn't really skip and that was the actual making of the caramel. On the surface it appeared to be a very simple step. According to the recipe I was using all you had to do was get a couple of cans of sweetened condensed milk, drop them into boiling water, come back periodically to make sure there was still enough water to keep the cans covered the entire time and two and a half hours later you had the main ingredient to the pie. I thought nothing of it, but apparently that is because I was never much for science class. Because everyone else I told about this step had the exact same reaction - "Aren't you worried those are going to explode?" No, I wasn't actually. The thought had never crossed my mind until this second. But, now I'm very concerned about it. Thanks for the peace of mind you just took from me. Originally I had just planned to check on the cans every hour or so, but with the threat of an explosion in my kitchen I was in there every 20 minutes. Fortunately I made it through the two and half hours without a single pop or finding a large circle of caramel on the kitchen ceiling, though listening to the cans rattle around in the pot did not exactly make the time fly.

Obviously, this is one of those times when ignorance would have been bliss. The thought of an explosion made me worry when I didn't have to. Still, it leaves me wondering just how in the hell did someone discover this particular chemical reaction? Who was the first person to throw cans of condensed milk into boiling water and know when they opened them up later it was going to be something totally different? I imagine it had to be by accident. Maybe they just knocked the can in, spent nearly three hours waiting for an explosion which never came, figured they got very lucky and then opened the can to discovered they had actually made a very sweet treat for themselves. That had to feel like a twice-lucky day. (Unless it was a couple of pranksters who were trying to make the cans explode like in a movie and failed. In which case I at least hope the discovery of the caramel brightened their spirits slightly.) Either way, I can't imagine this was done on purpose and if it was it had to be done by someone like me who was blissfully unaware of the potential danger, because no one who thinks a can is going to explode when exposed to that high heat for that long would ever do it on purpose. Basically, the first person who made caramel this way had to be really stupid or really confident.

It also makes me think of all the other inventions which have come along by accident. For example, did you know brandy was originally just wine which had been extra distilled to make it last longer while it was being transported? The wine sellers had planned to add the water that had been distilled out back to the mix before people drank it, but discovered that by letting what was left sit in wooden casks it had become an entirely different kind of alcohol. Or that the people who originally made Play-Doh had been trying to figure out a chemical compound to aid in removing wallpaper and made a toy instead? [Note to self: never let any kids put Play-Doh near their mouth.] Both of those things could easily be classified as "happy accidents" which had to feel like magic. I guess this leaves me with two observations: 1. Just because you didn't succeed at making the product you had set out to, that doesn't mean you failed and 2. Screw high school science classes. Clearly a few of these people failed basic chemistry and they turned out just fine.

[Sidebar: it occurs to me I shouldn't talk this much about the pie and not let you know how it turned out. It wasn't bad, if I do say so myself. Those of you interested in trying it for yourself can just Google it for all the various recipes, but the really simple one I used can be found here. After making the caramel (which can be done as far ahead of time as you want), the actual construction of the pie can be done in 20 minutes or so. I initially found the final product to be too rich for my blood. (Seriously, a diabetic might go into a coma just looking at this dessert.) But, as long as you stick with small slices it isn't overwhelming. The better suggestion came from my sister who told me it would make a much better ice cream topping. I tried it that way the next day and discovered she had the right idea. So, the way I really recommend having it is to add some cold vanilla ice cream to bowl that has a slice of Banoffee pie in it, stir it all together, then add a little extra whipped cream and you have got yourself one heck of a treat.]