King Louie's Bananas Foster

Now, I'm the king of the swingers,
the jungle V.I.P.
I've reached the top but had to stop
And that's what's botherin' me.
I wanna be a man, Man Cub
And stroll right into town
And be just like the other men
I'm tired of monkeying around.

-King Louie, The Jungle Book, Walt Disney Studios

Greetings to one and all. Sorry that it has been a long time between blog posts on the Cooking Challenge. However, it's good to be back and I promise that with this post that I'm going to be setting the bar to an all new height right here on blogger.com's Cooking Challenge!

I spent a lot of time producing a video entry this month. It's kind of long at about 15 minutes of run time but I hope that you will indulge me and watch it. I've rated it PG (for references to alcohol and cigarettes) but is pretty tame otherwise.

My friend, Jeff "Ozzy" Hagan, offered to join me again on another cooking adventure this month. Ozzy and his lady, Chelsea, did a tremendous job on the brain storming side of things for this month's theme of "Fictional Food." It was an over the top effort by both of them. There could only be one winner for our entry though but I would be remiss if I didn't share a bullet list of their fine effort for the ideas that didn't make it. Who knows? If you are lacking creativity for this month's topic, maybe you will find your inspiration here?

• Indiana Jones - Chilled Monkey Brains
• Soylent Green - Soylent Green
• The Grinch - Roast Beast
• Harry Potter - Polyjuice Potion
• Willy Wonka - Fruit Flavored Wallpaper
• Snow White - Poison Apple
• The Exorcist - Pea Green Soup
• Garfield - Lasagna
• Lion, Witch, Wardrobe - Turkish Delights

Bananas Foster is one of my favorite desserts of all time although I've never prepared it for myself before. I am well aware that this dish involves a flambe finish and I don't know if you can remember my past failures in regards to this type of cooking skill or not but I've actually never been successful at it. Check out my last post called Pineapple-Mango Delight for my first failed attempt at lighting alcohol on fire in a pan.

Nevertheless, I have set my chin forward and my eyes have become as flint with determination. There will be success this time....

The ingredients list for our dessert is really simple:

• 1/2 cup of brown sugar
• 1/2 cup of unsalted butter
• 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
• 4 bananas sliced to bite sized chunks
• 2/3 cup of dark rum
• 2 ounces of banana liquor (optional)
  

Add the cinnamon, brown sugar, and butter to a skillet and blend over medium high heat. Wait for the ingredients to thicken, stirring continuously. Add the bananas once the sauce thickens and incorporate thoroughly. Add the liquor and flambe. Remove from heat serve over the top of vanilla ice cream. Serve immediately.

As a special surprise, Ozzy and Chelsea own an ice cream maker and we were able to make our own vanilla ice cream as well. Chelsea left us a nice ingredients list and instructions on how to make vanilla ice cream which I tried to capture with a couple of photographs.






I cannot embed the video of our cooking adventure directly to blogger because the size of it exceed their limits. Instead, I am going to have to provide a link to it on my channel on YouTube.com. You can even watch it in high definition if you really need to see the gray hair of my beard better! Without further ado, I give you King Louie's Bananas Foster.

I hope you enjoy watching it as much as Ozzy and I had fun making the video. Be safe and take care.

BJ and Ozzy