I came up with this recipe about a year ago when trying to come up with a menu for a friend’s 40th birthday.  Okay, so the name isn’t very catchy but this dessert is positively addictive! Cake was settled on for the party but I’ve been making this ever since.  The inspiration for this dessert came from two separate sources: 1) my friend Victoria’s mother’s awesome turon; and 2) a dessert from Slanted Door in San Francisco – tapioca pudding with a brown sugar ginger sauce. When I first dreamed it up, the dish came out like this.

But then I wondered – what if I deconstructed it?  I find the ginger sauce combined with the lumpia wrappers and plantains mirror the stickiness of turon perfectly, while the ginger sauce with the ice cream and whipped cream complement each other in a really unexpected way.  Mix it all together in a napoleon…