* HOST: When I was growing up, dessert at a barbecue was an afterthought.

Sliced watermelon or a fruit salad.

Maybe pie from a local bakery.

It never occurred to us to grill dessert, unless it was to make that camping favorite, s'mores.

Today, we take a look back at some of my favorite firepower desserts and grilling techniques.

Get ready for Thai coconut bananas.

Salt slab grilled pears with Amaretti and smoked whipped cream.

The pear is smoky, juicy.

Grilled pound cake with fresh berry salsa.

This is going to be really refreshing.

Oh, look at that.

That looks great.

Dessert quesadillas.

And smoked ice cream with made from scratch rum raisin sauce.

Wow.

How cool is this?

From the Pearlstone Campus in Reisterstown, Maryland, I'm Steven Raichlen and this is Project Fire .

* ANNOUNCER: Steven Raichlen's Project Fire is made possible by...

This is The Big Green Egg, where fire and flavor come together.

You can roast, bake, and sear with the versatility of a grill, oven, and barbecue smoker combined.

Locate a dealer at biggreenegg.com.

Fire Magic, combining style with the versatility to sear, smoke, rotisserie cook, and charcoal grill, crafted in America for over 80 years... Green Mountain Grills, wood fired pellet grills... Blue Rhino...

Truly wireless temperature starts with Maverick.

And by the following... * STEVEN: Dessert.

For many people, it's the best part of the meal.

Cake, pie, ice cream.

They're all delectable.

But for me, they are missing one key component: live fire.

STEVEN: The s'more, of course, is a campfire favorite.

Smokey, gooey, fire roasted marshmallow, paired with sweet chocolate and a crunchy graham cracker.

It's the taste of a summer night under the stars.

But how can we merge the world of barbecue and desserts?

The easiest grill desserts involve fruit.

The heat and smoke from the fire can take ordinary pineapple, peach, or banana and elevate it to something otherworldly.

Depending on the fruit, you will grow with direct or indirect heat.

Direct grilling is best for soft or juicy fruits, like pineapples, peaches, and oranges.

The high dry heat of the fire caramelizes the natural plant sugars, delivering a sweet, smoky crust.

[fire swooshes in] Grilled bananas may still be something of a novelty in North America, but in Southeast Asia, you find them on street corner push carts everywhere.

Tonight, grilled bananas Thai style, basted with coconut caramel sauce.

I bet you can't eat just one.

First, the sauce.

I've heated a sauce pan over our hibachi.

And to it add one half cup of light brown sugar or palm sugar.

They'd use palm sugar in Southeast Asia.

What you want to do is melt the sugar and cook it until it starts to caramelize.

That's about 5-8 minutes.

* Add your coconut milk.

And the mixture may hiss and sputter.

That is a good thing.

Just stir the mixture until the sugar dissolves in the coconut milk, then place it back on the fire to melt the sugar.

And while that's working, let me show you the bananas.

So, we're using these tiny finger bananas.

And what you want to do is just cut the banana off the stem and peel it...ideally right before grilling.

And if you can't find finger bananas, use the smallest conventional bananas you can find.

And the sugar is melted.

The sauce is, uh, bubbling away.

So what you want to do is just close this vent a little bit.

That turns the heat down.

Now let me show you how to prepare the grill for the banana.

We want a screaming hot fire.

So, we'll open the vent here.

Okay, last of all, arrange the bananas on the grate in a neat row.

Why a neat row?

So, they cook evenly and you can remember which one needs turning.

* This recipe was inspired by a street vendor who grills off of a push cart behind the Thai Orchid Sheraton Hotel in Bangkok.

Her bananas are so famous, she's been written up by guidebooks around the world.

And now as the bananas grill, what you want to do is baste them with this coconut caramel sauce.

The aroma is absolutely incredible.

* And if the heat gets too hot, simply close down this damper.

And the beauty of these finger bananas is they're supernaturally fruity and sweet.

When the bananas are golden brown, they're done.

It's really quick.

So here are your grilled bananas.

And you can just take a little bit more of the coconut caramel sauce and spoon it over the bananas, and serve the remaining sauce on the side.

And there you have it.

Thai grilled bananas with coconut caramel.

Let's see how we did.

* Mmm, this is like, banana coconut candy.

[fire swooshes in] Indirect grilling is another method for preparing a fruit dessert.

It works best with firm or whole fruits, like apples or pears.

Sure, you can direct grill these as well, but I like to add extra flavor and high drama by grilling on a salt slab or cedar plank.

[fire swooshes in] It's hard to imagine a dessert these days that doesn't contain sea salt, an ingredient that both counterpoints and accentuates the sweetness.

What better way to introduce salt than by grilling on a salt slab?

I give you smoke-roasted pears stuffed with Italian Amaretti cookies.

* You've probably seen full-size salt slabs.

These are individual slabs cut from Himalayan pink salt.

First thing you want to do is preheat the slabs slowly, so they don't explode on contact with the heat.

I'm using a Kamado style ceramic cooker.

I built a nice bed of lit coals in the bottom.

And the first step will be to place a pear wood chunk on the coals to generate wood smoke.

Next, put on your gloves and insert the heat diffuser, also known as a convector plate.

Then, place the grate on the convector plate.

Then, place your salt slabs on the grill grate.

Then, close the grill lid and adjust the vents to obtain a grilling temperature of 400 degrees.

Now for the filling and the pears.

The filling starts with Amaretti, Italian almond cookies.

Add the cookies to a food processor and grind to a fine powder.

[food processor whirring] Next, work in brown sugar.

Add cinnamon for spice, grated lemon zest for fragrance, and unsalted butter for richness.

Process to obtain a smooth creamy filling.

* I'll take a taste.

Mmm, nice yin-yang of almond and lemon.

For the pears, remove the stem and cut each pear in half length-wise.

Then, using a spoon, remove the seeds and make a little cut to remove the base.

Next, cut a lemon in half, then rub the cut side of the pears to keep them from browning.

Then, spoon the filling into the pears.

Place the Amaretti stuffed pears on the salt slabs.

Close the grill lid and smoke roast the pears until soft, about 45 minutes.

[fire swooshes in] To serve with the pears, homemade whipped cream is great.

Smoked whipped cream is even better.

Here's how you do it.

Cover the bowl of whipped cream with plastic wrap.

Now, load a handheld smoker with fruit wood sawdust.

Turn on the smoker, and when you have smoke, insert the end of the smoker hose into the bowl of whipped cream.

* Re-cover the bowl and let the smoke infuse in the whipped cream for five minutes.

Repeat two or three times until you get the desired smoke flavor.

Back to the pears.

So, it's been 45 minutes.

The pears look done.

They're bronze with wood smoke.

The juices are bubbling.

The filling is brown.

They look great.

To check for doneness use what I call the Charmin test.

Give a little squeeze on the side.

They're soft.

They're ready.

* Here are your salt slab grilled pears.

They look amazing.

Take one for me.

And then, a dollop of this smoked whipped cream and a little freshly grated cinnamon on top.

* Let's see how we did.

First, the whipped cream.

Mmm, it's utterly transformed by the smoke flavor.

And now, the pear.

* Mmm!

The pear is smoky, juicy, almondy, and the salt slab really does accentuate its sweetness.

[fire swooshes in] For another approach to grilled desserts, consider this: wood fire grilled pound cake.

Using your grill as a live fire toaster produces a quick, easy dessert that adds high drama to a common treat.

* I had the idea to make a grilled toast-like dessert by grilling slices of pound cake.

Uh, the hot fire caramelizes the sugar in the pound cake, gives you all sorts of wonderful smoky aromas.

It's a super simple dessert, but everybody loves it.

Cut the pound cake into slices about three quarters of an inch thick.

* Then, arrange the pound cake slices on a wire rack.

* Then, brush the pound cake slices with melted butter.

* Next, prepare the salsa.

It's a mixed berry salsa.

I have strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries.

Add brown sugar.

Chopped fresh mint.

This takes the place of cilantro in a tomato salsa.

Next, jalape�os.

I remove the seeds because after all, this is a dessert.

And finally, freshly squeezed lime juice.

It is important to have all the components of the dessert prepared before you grill the pound cake.

* Now, gently stir the ingredients to make the salsa.

Beautiful colors, nice fresh mint aroma.

This is going to be really refreshing.

Step number three, smoke the whipped cream and let the smoke flavor infuse in the whipped cream four or five minutes.

Meanwhile, let me show you the grill.

It's a combination wood-burning grill and plancha.

Plancha, a fire heated metal griddle.

And as always, I want to start by cleaning the grill grate with a stiff wire brush.

Then, oiling it with either a folded paper towel or one of these oiling cloths dipped in vegetable oil, drawn across the bars of the grate.

Let me get the pound cake.

Arrange the pound cake slices on the grill.

You can see the wood smoke rising up from the fire chamber.

And then, we'll give each one a turn.

* This is quick, folks.

You do not want to abandon your grill.

* And once, the pound cake is grilled, return it to the wire rack.

Wire rack is nice, so that pound cake doesn't get soggy on the bottom.

* All right, let's put it all together.

So, just arrange it on a platter.

In TV speak, we call this "shingling."

* Okay.

So, here's the grilled pound cake and a dollop of this smoked whipped cream.

Oh, yeah.

And finally, some of this minted berry salsa.

So there you have it folks, grilled pound cake, mixed berry salsa, smoked whipped cream.

Let's see how we did.

Wow!

That smoked whipped cream tastes exactly like a s'more.

And the caramelization of the sugar in the pound cake.

Let's see with the salsa.

Mmm, refreshing with the fruit and mint.

And then, you get that unexpected little heat from the jalapeno.

I got to tell you, it's fabulous.

[fire swooshes in] A traditional quesadilla is a sort of Mexican grilled cheese sandwich.

What would happen if we re-imagined it as a grilled dessert with bananas, dulce de leche, and queso fresco?

* I have melted unsalted butter over the side burner.

Take a flour tortilla and brush one side with melted butter.

Sprinkle it with granulated sugar and turn it upside down.

First ingredient is Dulce de leche, which is a milk caramel.

And spread the dulce de leche over the unbuttered side of the flour tortilla.

Take a ripe banana, peel it, and thinly slice it.

* Then, arrange the banana slices on top of the dulce de leche.

And because this is a quesadilla, it needs cheese.

The cheese, I'm using is called "queso fresco."

Crumble it and sprinkle it on top of the bananas.

You've got salty, tangy cheese combined with sweet bananas and sweet dulce de leche.

Next, spread more dulce de leche on another tortilla, and place it on top of the bananas.

And brush the top of the quesadilla with more melted butter and sprinkle with more sugar.

And finally, grate fresh cinnamon on top of the quesadilla.

And let's make one more.

* That's all there is to it.

Now, back to the grill.

I can see the grill has thoroughly preheated.

One Mississippi, two Mississippi.

Ouch.

So, couple swipes with the grill brush.

This grill is pretty clean, but it's a good habit to stay in.

Next, we'll oil the grill grate.

And because sugar tends to stick, it's very important to oil your grill grate well.

To transfer the quesadillas to the grill, you can use a pizza peel.

Instead of sprinkling it with flour or corn meal, sprinkle it with sugar.

Then, transfer the quesadilla to the peel and slide the quesadilla right on the grill grate.

And you want to work fast because the tortillas burn quickly.

You can give each quesadilla a quarter turn and check the bottom to make sure they brown evenly.

So, when it's ready to flip, we'll just turn the quesadilla over.

Oh, look at that.

That looks great.

What's happening here is the butter and sugar melting together to create a crisp caramel crust.

Again, keep these moving.

* And once the quesadillas are browned on the bottom, slide them back on the pizza peel and transfer to the cutting board.

So here's your other dessert quesadilla.

I'll transfer this quesadilla to a platter.

And this one, we'll just cut in sixths.

It's a little messy.

It's supposed to be messy.

Take a bite.

Mmm!

The buttery crisp tortilla, sweet bananas, that sweet milk caramel.

This is outrageous.

[fire swooshes in] If smoke is the umami of barbecue, it's also the umami of grilled desserts, which brings us to our final dessert, a dish so improbable, I almost hesitated to try it.

[fire swooshes in] Is there any food, you can't smoke?

Prior to this you might've said ice cream.

I love this dish because it shows how wood smoke gives you a radical new perspective on a food, you've eaten your whole life.

I give you hickory smoked ice cream with homemade rum raisin butter sauce.

* These are beautiful local raisins, and you want to soak them in rum to cover until soft.

To smoke the ice cream, we're using a water smoker.

I built a hot bed of coals in the fire box.

Then, place the smoke chamber on top.

And normally, you'd fill the water pan with water, but to keep the ice cream frozen, fill the water pan with ice.

Now, place the grate on top.

Normally, I soak the wood chips to slow down the rate of combustion.

Here, I want to generate as much smoke as possible as quickly as possible, so the ice cream doesn't melt.

So, open the front hatch and add our hickory chips directly to the fire.

* Then, close the front hatch, and place the ice cream in a bowl with ice in the smoker and place the lid on top.

You'll smoke the ice cream for 3-5 minutes.

Just long enough to coat the outside with a patina of wood smoke.

Let me show you the rum raisin sauce.

First, melt the butter in a cast iron skillet.

* Once the butter's melted, add the brown sugar... * ...and rum and raisins.

Bring the mixture to a boil and cook until thick and syrupy.

So, the rum raisin sauce is ready.

Let's check on the ice cream.

Well, how cool is this?

Thanks to the ice in the water pan and the ice under the ice cream, the ice cream has stayed solid, but it is definitely smoke-scented.

So to serve, I will take a scoop of the ice cream, or even two scoops of the smoked ice cream.

And on top, we'll spoon the rum raisin butter sauce.

Oh, yeah.

* Now, a bite.

Oh, man.

This is all about contrast.

The hot rum raisin sauce, the cold ice cream.

The sweetness of the brown sugar and ice cream, the smoke from the hickory chips.

This is unlike any ice cream you've ever tasted.

So these are some of my favorite grilled desserts.

I hope they inspire you to give your next barbecue a sweet finish.

See you next time.

ANNOUNCER: For recipes and more live-fire cooking, visit stevenraichlen.com.

You can also follow Steven Raichlen on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Steven's book, "How to Grill Vegetables," and the classic, "Project Smoke," can be ordered online at stevenraichlen.com, or call this phone number for ordering and customer service.

Steven Raichlen's Project Fire was made possible by...

This is The Big Green Egg, where fire and flavor come together.

You can roast, bake, and sear with the versatility of a grill, oven, and barbecue smoker combined.

Locate a dealer at biggreenegg.com.

Fire Magic, combining style with the versatility to sear, smoke, rotisserie cook, and charcoal grill, crafted in America for over 80 years... Green Mountain Grills, wood fired pellet grills... Blue Rhino...

Truly wireless temperature starts with Maverick.

And by the following... STEVEN: Grilled bananas may still be something of a... Italian almond cookies.

Place them in a food processor.

Whoops.

You didn't see that jump out, did you?

CREW MEMBER: Action!

STEVEN: Okay.

CREW MEMBER: And, no, no, no.

CREW MEMBER #2: Quiet on set, please.

CREW MEMBER: Ready, and... STEVEN: Until you see the orange glow of the... Ooh, wrong camera.

Bad points for that.

CREW MEMBER #3: Looking at Tim.

Looking at Tim.

STEVEN: Ay-ay-ay.

Tim, we got to put a red bullseye on you or something.

* *