Kitchen Notes: Il Barista's Flying Shrapnel Death Pie

It's Il Barista in the kitchen this time, cooking a birthday dinner for La Parisienne and working on a British sweet that I'm calling "Flying Shrapnel Death Pie."

He called for my thoughts about the recipe because it has one odd step in it. The recipe calls for making a toffee sauce by boiling an unopened can of sweetened condensed milk. For three hours. What?

What if the can in question has a weak spot or a flaw? What if the internal heat and pressure become too much and the whole tin just blew up? Is this a recipe created by Michael Bay? Visions of bursting cans and flying bits of metal and soaring globs of scalding-hot milky goop are dancing in my head. Fire in the hole! Hit the deck!

But, seriously, here's the recipe from its actual creators at the Hungry Monk Restaurant in East Sussex, England. See here too. The seemingly nutty practice of boiling cans of sweet milk seems common enough -- or common enough for British celebri-chef Jamie Oliver to endorse it in one of his own recipes.

Still, Il Barista and I discussed the relative practical wisdom of this whole can-boiling thing. He wants to make that delicious-sounding dessert -- but without causing a household emergency and risk to life and limb. I told him that I wouldn't boil a can if I were in his shoes. He found another version of the recipe sans boiling cans. It even talks about can explosions.

Oh, I found a cautionary note here about exploding cans. So it really is a risk.

UPDATE: Il Barista just called with an update. His Flying Shrapnel Death Pie turned out deliciously well, with nary an exploding tin in sight. Yummy sticky sweet toffee . . . Still, the Opera Diva emailed from the UK to report that she lost a dental filling the last time she had sticky toffee. Apparently this British toffee business can be a bit dangerous all around!