Banana Bread "Toast" with Bananas Foster 1.09 Rory's Dance
“That is a mashed banana on toast.” “OK.” “ I used to make this for you all the time when you were a little girl.” “You did?” “Yes, whenever you got sick I made this.” “Are you sure it wasn't the other way around?”
Ingredients:
For the banana bread:
¾ cup granulated sugar
1 egg
½ cup buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla
3 ripened bananas, mashed
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
½ cup chopped walnuts
For the bananas foster:
2 tbsp butter
⅓ cup brown sugar
¼ tsp cinnamon
A dash of salt
2 ripened bananas, sliced
½ tsp vanilla extract
¼ cup whisky, bourbon, or dark rum, your choice!
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
In a large mixing bowl, mix the sugar, egg, buttermilk, and vanilla until thick and creamy.
Mix in the mashed bananas until fully combined. Then sift in flour, baking soda, and salt. Mix until fully combined.
Fold in the chopped walnuts.
In a greased and floured loaf pan, carefully add bread batter. Use a spatula to level.
Bake for 25 to 30 minutes at 350 degrees or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
While the banana bread is cooling, prepare the bananas foster sauce by melting the butter in a large skillet over medium heat.
Once the butter melts, add the brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt. Stir continuously so that it doesn’t burn.
After the sugar fully dissolves into the butter, about 3 minutes, add the bananas and stir for another 2 minutes.
Very carefully, add the vanilla and the alcohol. You can get fancy and flambé the sauce if you’d like. Cook for another 2-3 minutes to allow the alcohol to cook down.
When the banana bread has cooled but is still warm, cut into slices about an inch thick.
Pour about a ¼-½ cup of the bananas foster sauce over the banana bread!
So this isn’t technically the same thing Emily makes for Lorelai when she stays with her, but I never said I was making the exact dish that’s mentioned on the show, just one that is inspired by the show. I loved mashed banana on toast, though I do usually put peanut butter on the toast before adding the banana. But there isn’t much cooking involved in mashed banana on toast unless you bake your own bread. Originally, that’s what I was just going to do, but I thought, why not make it banana bread? And then I thought, why spread mashed banana on top of banana bread when I could make bananas foster and pour that over instead? This is Eating Gilmore elevated.
Banana bread with bananas foster isn’t probably the best thing to eat when you’re sick, so if that’s the case, I’d recommend sticking with Emily’s mashed banana on toast. But if you’re wanting a sweet, delicious dessert, I think you’ve found a winner here. I was too impatient to take a bite of this, but I think you could use the bread to make French toast and take this dessert to another level. I joined the banana bread trend in the earlier part of quarantine as well as the Dalgona coffee, though I never tried sourdough. I’m not sure why banana bread was the baked good we all went with, but I was not mad at it. But I definitely think it needs to make a comeback with bananas foster!
When I made my banana bread, I tried out a new recipe. The one I shared at the top of this post is an old reliable. The taste of the loaf I made was spot on, but I didn’t get the rise I wanted out of it. You can honestly use whatever banana bread recipe you prefer and it will taste amazing with the sauce. So whether you have stayed in quarantine since March or where you live has entered its second lockdown, this will make an excellent quarantine treat! When you make the bananas foster sauce, you can flambé the alcohol with a blow torch or a grill lighter. However, I live in a small apartment, and I was not about to set off the really sensitive smoke detectors.
I’m not quite sure how I remember this, but I’m pretty sure this was the second episode of Gilmore Girls I ever watched. If you haven’t read about the first time I saw the show and how I fell in love with it, be sure to check out my introduction post. As I mentioned, I first caught the show in syndication on ABC Family. After watching the pilot episode, I didn’t catch another one until Rory’s Dance. It was such a good episode to stumble upon too, from the sweet moments between Rory and Dean (he really is a completely different character in season one than throughout the rest of the series) and the two big fights at the end of the episode. It took a few rewatches for me to fully invest in the Lorelai and Emily relationship plotline. I used to think Rory and Lorelai’s mother/daughter relationship was the most important of Gilmore Girls, but Lorelai and Emily’s relationship truly is the crux of the show.
To me, it is truly poetic when Lorelai and Emily have their big fight about Rory not coming home after the dance and Lorelai defends Rory only to have the fight shift gears when Lorelai realizes Rory’s home, and they get into their fight. It’s like when no one else can fight your best friend, but when they do something wrong, you’ll be the first person to call them out. I also love that this is where the episode ends. It doesn’t end on a happy note like the last times Lorelai and Rory have fought, but it carries over to the next episode.
We should talk about Dean Forester. He’s such a good boyfriend in this episode, agreeing to go to the dance with Rory even though it’s obvious school dances are definitely not his scene. He also handles the bratty Chilton kids really well, even Tristan’s stupid barn jokes (seriously, you couldn’t come up with something a little more clever Chad Michael Mudface [if you know, you know]). Dean also delivers the great line, “I’m not going to fight you, it’d be like fighting an accountant.” Oh, high school boys.
Then we get the sweet moment when Rory and Dean agree they are boyfriend and girlfriend. And though it causes trouble later on in the episode, I do like the scene of them in Miss Patty’s reading from Dorthy Parker and then falling asleep. With this episode, I can easily see why someone would be Team Dean. He’s such a good match for Rory and again, I hate that they ruin his character to make room for Jess. Which team are you on? And also, can you guess what team I’m on? I will say it’s a more nuanced answer for me than a simple Team Jess, Team Logan, Team Marty, or Team Wookie (ugh), but I’d like to hear your theories!
Happy Cooking!
If you missed what I made last week, catch up here!
