The Firecracker

Ingre­di­ents

• Blue layer:
• 2 cups gran­u­lated sugar
• 1 cup water
• 1/4 tea­spoon rum extract (or a splash or two of rum if you’re into that)
• a drop or 2 of royal blue Ameri­color gel food color
• White layer:
• 3 medium bananas
• 1/4 cup cream of coconut
• 1/4 cup pineap­ple juice
• 1/3 cup cream
• Red layer:
• 1 cup fresh (or frozen) raspberries
• 1/4 cup rasp­berry syrup (Torani, or make your own)
• 2 cups ice
• a drop of Super Red Ameri­color gel paste food color–depending on how red you like the rasp­berry layer to be

Instruc­tions

1. Make the lay­ers in this order:
2. BLUE LAYER:
3. In a small saucepan, mix the sugar and water together. Heat until sugar is dis­solved, stir­ring well. It’s not nec­es­sary to boil this mix­ture, but a milute or two on medium is great.
4. Pull off the heat.
5. Pour into a clear con­tainer to color. It’s dif­fi­cult to gauge the level of blue oth­er­wise. My first attempt was so blue you couldn’t see through it. Hold it up to a win­dow if that helps. Add one drop to begin with.
6. The sim­ple syrup can be made well ahead of time and stored in the fridge for days if needed.
7. WHITE LAYER:
8. Blend this mix­ture together and set aside in the fridge while you mix the red layer.
9. RED LAYER:
10. a drop of Super Red Ameri­color gel paste food color–depending on how red you like the rasp­berry layer to be
11. Blend really well in a blender. (I mean REALLY WELL! It’s like a THICK slurpee.….)
12. If you don’t have two blenders, then Pour your red mix­ture into a bowl and stick in the freezer while you com­plete the next step.
13. Assembly:
14. Pour blue sim­ple syrup into the bot­tom of your glasses. (Esti­mate how full of drink your glass will even­tu­ally be, and gauge one third of that for the blue. It help if your glasses are a bit nar­rower at the bot­tom. The blue layer is very sweet. The drink will taste bet­ter if your ratio of blue is actu­ally a lit­tle less than the others.)
15. Take your white mix­ture from the fridge and in a clean blender, blend 1 cup of banana mix­ture REALLY WELL with 1 cup of ice.
16. Using a bast­ing syringe, layer into the next third the white over the blue start­ing on the out­side edge work­ing inward in a swirling direc­tion. This helps keep the lay­ers from intermixing.
17. Take the red layer from the freezer and layer in the same way using a clean bast­ing syringe to fill the last third of your drink area.