bananas Foster: the happy mess

So I ended up making bananas Foster—or bananes flambées, as the French would call it.* I found a bottle of rum for about $22. The problem: it's not Bacardi, whose taste I kind of enjoy, and it's a skull-blasting 151 proof. I tried a straight shot of the rum out of monkey curiosity, so that's how I know the "skull-blasting" part.

The process for making the dish is fairly simple. Take three large, fairly ripe bananas and split them lengthwise. Set them aside, then make the syrup that makes this dish what it is. The syrup's ingredients: 2/3 cup of brown sugar, a splash of vanilla extract, about a teaspoon of cinnamon, a half-stick (4 ounces) of butter, and 3.5 tablespoons of rum. Dump all those ingredients into a pan, set over medium flame, then stir until the butter has completely melted. Drop in your halved bananas, preferably flat-side-down. Cook in the syrup for 1-2 minutes until softened. Spoon a couple banana halves into a bowl; top with vanilla ice cream and, if you want, drizzle the ice cream with a bit more of the syrup.

I decided to do the full-on flambée, as you'll see—kind of—in the pics below. I was pretty sure my phone's camera wouldn't capture the flames if I kept my apartment fully lit, so for one pic, I doused all the lights, and for another pic, I left only one light on. You'll notice, however, that even in the fully lit pics, you can see the syrup bubbling because of the burning rum. This actually made the bowl hard to hold; I had to use a towel to carry the bowl to my desk (which serves as my dinner table whenever I eat alone).

See the bubbling around the edges? Invisible flames, baby:

I've sloshed on more syrup in the following pic:

The next pic shows the flames but not the dessert:

Finally, we can see both the flames and the dessert in low-light conditions:

The harsh lesson I learned, with 151-proof rum, is that if you're going to do the flambée thing, you don't need a lot of rum at all. I dumped half a shot glass of rum onto my dessert, and while a lot of it burned away, a lot of it didn't, and the remaining rum really took over the taste of the dessert. Lesson learned. I made bananas Foster again tonight, without flambéeing, and the dessert turned out perfect. The rum used in the syrup cooks out so that you're left with a rummy taste but very little actual alcohol. I still miss Bacardi, which is sweeter and smoother than the rather astringent Ron Corina 151 Proof I'd bought. My very own corinavirus.

I'm not normally into boozy desserts, but I'll make an exception for my mother's rum cake (my brother David is now the keeper of that particular flame) and for bananas Foster.

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*A pedant might note that bananas Foster is almost always made with rum, whereas bananes flambées can be made with either rum or Grand Marnier.