Flambeed fruit in rum is the most ubiquitous dessert that you’ll find in Mauritius. It’s super sweet, deliciously rummy and incorporates the island’s amazing tropical fruit: a clear winner all-round.

This is a simple recipe for Mauritian fruit flambe – you do get more elaborate recipes using spices. Once you’ve mastered the basic recipe, play around with adding spices such as cardamom, cinnamon and star anise to your sugar-butter mixture.

Mauritian fruit flambe

Serves two

• 30 g butter
• 5 tbsp brown sugar
• 100 g pineapple, chopped into chunks
• 1 banana, chopped
• 20 ml rum
• Coconut or vanilla ice cream, to serve

Melt the butter slowly in a pan and add the sugar, letting it caramelise slowly while you continue to stir. Then sautee the fruit in the caramel for a couple of minutes (until the fruit is soft but not mushy) and then add the rum and flambee (carefully) by lighting the rum (please don’t do this if you’ve been drinking rum). Let the alcohol burn off and it’s ready to eat! Serve with a scoop of vanilla (or even better – coconut) ice cream.

If you want to get fancy, you can use half a papaya for serving the fruit flambe.

Photo by Russell Smith www.russellsmith.co.za

Check out my other Mauritius food blogs:

25 of the best things to eat and drink in Mauritius

A foodie exploration of Mauritius in photos

Mauritian recipe: prawn rougaille

Mauritian recipe: sweet potato cakes

Mauritian recipe: Creole chicken curry