parfait

This banana salted caramel mascarpone parfait is everything you’re looking for as a party dessert or romantic dessert for two – it has its own visual impact while pleasing your palate to the last bit. It is intricately layered with light mascarpone cream, banana slices, biscuit crumbs, salted caramel, and topped with salted caramel cream and cocoa powder.

The idea of making this parfait came up more than a month ago, but I was hesitant to make it because I didn’t have (and didn’t want to spend extra money to buy) the glasses that I thought were the best fit for the parfait. Students’ problems. However, for some reasons, I gave in as the urge of making this dessert became irresistbably strong when I was making tiramisu at work. As you can see, the plastic containers that I decided to use surprisingly looked good in the end!

This mascarpone cream is essentially the cream used for tiramisu – it’s light and airy using just the simplest ingredients for baking. The recipe for the mascarpone cream is not sweet at all so it’s preferable to use riped bananas and, of course, you can go a little bit crazy with the salted caramel drizzles! To me, the key to a heart-winning parfait is having different layers and textures that well complement each other. For this reason, I added biscuit crumbs in the middle layer as the needed crunch among the smooth. Also, just to accentuate the flavours of salted caramel, I mixed it with the remaining mascarpone cream and pipe little cute blobs dusted with cocoa powder on top as the finishing touch. A small reminder: as the cocoa powder absorbs moisture very quickly after dusting, you should only dust it right before serving.

Ingredients:

• 50g  salted caramel* (to mix with cream)
• 80g salted caramel (to drizzle)
• 2 bananas, thinly sliced
• cocoa powder for dusting
• 70g biscuit, crushed
  * I used the Homemade Salted Caramel recipe by Sally’s Baking Addiction for this parfait.

Mascarpone cream

• 350 mascarpone cheese
• 250g pure cream (semi-whipped)
• Sabayon:
  • 2 whole eggs
  • 2 egg yolks
  • 100g caster sugar  
• Meringue:
  • 2 egg white
  • 35g caster sugar

Instructions:

1. Semi-whip cream and keep it in fridge until ready to use.
2. Make meringue by whipping egg white and caster sugar until stiff peak. Set aside until ready to use.
3. While the meringue is whipping. Put and whisk well egg yolks, whole eggs and sugar in bowl. Heat the mixture over bain marie while stirring occasionally to 65C. Beat the mixture with an electric mixer on high speed to make sabayon (it’s also called the ribbon stage when the egg mixture becomes pale yellow and thick).
4. Turn to low speed, add mascarpone cheese to sabayon and mix until incorporated.
5. Using a spatula, gently fold in the meringue in 2 times until just incorporated. Then, gently fold in the whipped cream just until the mixture becomes homogeneous.
6. Reserve 200g of cream in the mixing bowl, transfer the remaining mixture to a piping bag topped with a round nozzle.
7. Add 50g salted caramel to the mixing bowl, mix with the reserved cream on medium cream until well mixed. Set aside.  

Assemble:

1. Pipe a layer of mascarpone cream into each mould.
2. Sprinkle biscuit crumbs.
3. Arrange a layer of banana slices.
4. Generously drizzle salted caramel.
5. Pipe another layer of mascarpone cream until it fllls up the mould.
6. Smoothen the surface with a palette knife.
7. Squeeze out any remaining cream from the piping bag, and transfer the salted caramel mascarpone cream into the same piping bag. Pipe cream on top.  
8. Dust with cocoa powder.

Yum