Unconventional Dessert Combos to Try at Least Once in Your Life: Hot Sauce Edition

Hot sauce may not be the first condiment that comes to mind for enhancing your sweet dishes. However, chili has been tried and tested to complement tangy fruits like lemon and pineapple, sweet and pulpy ones like mango, and even chocolate. But hot sauce is more than just chili; it can be made with vinegar or lime juice, include sugars and molasses for a touch of sweetness, and even be fermented to achieve a hot and funky taste. So, it's not surprising that the culinary world has ventured into pairing hot sauces with desserts.

This pairing might sound a tad bit odd, but challenging culinary norms is all about experimentation, having an adventurous streak, and maintaining an open-minded approach. You never know what you thought wouldn't work ends up yielding something surprisingly delicious. Here are some recipes for you to test out and decide for yourself whether this combination is a bop or a flop:

Dark Chocolate Chipotle Cookies

Ingredients:

• ½ cup of softened butter
• ¾ cup of brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract or essence
• 2 tsp of chipotle pepper hot sauce
• 1 ½ cups of refined flour
• ¼ cup of Cadbury cocoa powder
• 1 tsp of baking soda
• ½ tsp of salt
• 1 cup of roughly chopped Cadbury dark chocolate

Instructions:

• Preheat the oven to 350 F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
• Cream together butter and sugar in a large bowl either by hand or with an electric mixer. Then add the egg, vanilla, and hot sauce.
• Combine flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt in another bowl.
• Gradually add the dry ingredients into the creamed egg mixture, mixing till you get a sticky cookie dough. Add the chocolate chunks to this.
• Cover the cookie dough bowl with plastic wrap and let it chill in the fridge for about 30 minutes. Alternatively, you can also put it in the freezer for 15 minutes.
• Then scoop a tablespoon’s worth of cookie dough on your baking sheet. Press each ball to give it a cookie shape. Space them out so they don’t glue together once they spread in the oven.
• Bake the cookies in the oven for 8 to 10 minutes, then cool them on a wire rack.

Sriracha Ice Cream

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of milk
• 2 cups of cream
• 5 egg yolks
• ¾ cup of sugar
• 2 cups of sriracha

Instructions:

• Heat milk, salt, sugar, and Sriracha in a saucepan. Once the sugar has dissolved, take it off the heat.
• In the lukewarm milk, slowly incorporate the egg yolks into this, while continuously stirring to avoid any scrambling.
• Put the saucepan back on low heat and continue mixing till you get a custard-like consistency.
• Strain the custard to remove any possible lumps, then pour into a bowl, cover with cling wrap and chill in the fridge.
• Pour this mixture into your ice cream maker and keep churning till it starts to resemble the ice cream.
• Else you can do it manually by mixing the custard every 2 hours and putting it back in the fridge. This should take you about 6 hours.
• Then refrigerate online for the flavors to deepen.

Hot Sauce Mango Coulis

Ingredients:

• 1 ½ cups of chopped fresh or frozen mango
• 2 tsp of tabasco sauce
• 1 ½ tbsp of sugar

Instructions:

• Place the hot sauce, mango, and sugar in a saucepan on low heat until the mango starts to release juice and becomes mushy.
• Cook on low heat for 10 to 15 minutes, stirring occasionally to avoid the mixture from sticking to the sides and the bottom of the pan.
• Take the saucepan off the heat and let it cool.
• Then blend all of this till smooth with an immersion blender or in your mixer-grinder. There should be no lumps.
• At this point, taste for acidity, spice, and sweetness. If you have a penchant for spice, then up the amount of tabasco.
• To make the coulis even smoother, you can strain it through a fine mesh sieve or a muslin cloth.
• Transfer into a sterile airtight jar and store in the fridge for up to a week. This coulis can go well with ice creams, trifle puddings, and even chocolate cake.