When most Americans think of Thai desserts, I would hazard to guess mango sticky rice and fried bananas immediately come to mind. I was certainly thinking of making fried bananas when I brought a bunch of firm, almost ripe baby bananas home this past weekend. But the boyfriend had another delicious street food in mind - grilled bananas drizzled with a sweet coconut caramel sauce... And yes, it was as decadent as it sounds!
You start by soaking a few wooden skewers in water for ~30 minutes so they don't burn on the grill. Then it's just a matter of placing a few bananas on the skewers and grilling them. I used medium heat and left the bananas on for ~10 minutes on each side, just until they had nice grill marks, but not long enough to do serious damage.
While the bananas are grilling, you can make the coconut caramel sauce. Mix 1 cup coconut cream, 3 tablespoons palm sugar, and a generous pinch of salt together over medium high heat until the sugar is dissolved. Continue to cook the sauce until it becomes a little thicker and darker in color than it started out.
Then you drizzle a spoonful of the coconut sauce over the top of the grilled bananas and devour them while they're still hot! I can still imagine the flavors of the charred banana and sweet coconut sauce as I'm typing this... my mouth is literally watering, they were so good! I'll still plan to make fried bananas at some point in the future, but I think I could be perfectly satisfied with grilled bananas as my go-to Thai dessert for quite a while!
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