Lately, I’ve been posting a lot of recipes for spicy desserts. Not just because we writers are a lazy lot people who try to get the most out of a subject. Over the last few years we’ve seen more sweet offerings at the National Fiery Foods & Barbecue Show. Seeing a tendency like this at one show would be happenstance, twice coincidence, and three shows, well, that’s an outright movement. The easy route to sweet heat is the strategic application of cayenne or chile pepper to chocolate. While I’m as easy as the next guy, there’s no real art to just adding a chile to an existing dessert recipe and calling it a day. Here are some sources of heat to consider when you start your own adventures in spicy dessert.
Chinese Man Eats 5 Lbs of Chile Peppers A DAY
According to a report from The Daily Mail, a man in China downs five pounds of chiles each and every day. I don’t eat five pounds of food each day, let alone all chile peppers, all the time.
Hot Sauce Sales Hit New High
Earlier this week, we talked about how hot sauce has hit the mainstream market with great vengeance and furious anger, with over 50% of American homes having one flavor or another of it on hand. Statista, the Statistics Portal, says that “hot sauce sales are the eighth-fastest growing industry in the U.S. Sales were $1.07 billion in 2012 and are projected to be $1.32 billion in 2017.”
Hot Sauce is Hot Commodity
You know you’re mainstream when McDonald’s and Burger King put you on a burger. Chiles have made their way into fast food sandwiches all over the country; Wendy’s even has a ghost pepper burger (granted, it’s not that hot, but still). The NPD Group is a global info company that tracks this sort of thing. According to them, fifty-six percent of America’s households keep spicy heat on hand.
Hot News
Here’s some of the latest news and items from the world of chiles, smoke, and fire.
Ghost Pepper Ice Cream
I’m not surprised Chip Hearn concocted ghost pepper ice cream at his Rehobeth Beach, Delaware joint, The Ice Cream Store. Given his love for spicy and his other love for ice cream, it was only a matter of time before he set those two crazy kids up, let nature take its course, and gave us the resulting lovechild that is his ghost pepper ice cream.
Are Chiles and Longevity BFFs?
In the latest inconclusive scientific test alluding to the benefits of eating heat, spicy food was an indicator for longer life in over 500,000 Chinese people.
