In 1951, when the Brennan restaurant operation consisted only of Brennan's Vieux Carre on Bourbon Street, Owen Brennan asked his sister Ella to come up with a fancy new dessert for a dinner that night honoring Richard Foster for being named chairman of the New Orleans Crime Commission. An already-overworked Ella Brennan gathered her chef, Paul Blange, and headwaiter in the kitchen to help her dream up the new dessert. Scanning the kitchen and spying bananas, she thought of a simple dessert her mother had made by splitting the yellow fruit and sautéing the halves with butter and brown sugar. To jazz it up, she said in her memoir, they poured rum and banana liqueur on top, setting the mixture on fire at tableside, tossing in cinnamon to make it sparkle and serving the concoction over vanilla ice cream. They called it "Bananas Foster."
The bananas are cooked in a bubbling pan of dark brown sugar, butter, rum, banana liquor, and cinnamon and served over ice cream in this deliciously simple–yet elegant–dessert.
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Ready In: 15 minutes
Yield: 4 servings
Optional: Serve with crepes and ice cream for bananas foster crepes.
